It's 2022 and you've been working on your goals, objectives, and KPI's for the year. You have a list of projects that will require significant time and resources to complete--but you can only do so much. How do you objectively align on priorities to create organizational focus? In this article, I'll take you through a true and tried method for creating organizational focus through prioritization.
Step 1: Create your committee.
The first step is to create your committee. This should be a group of people who are representative of the different areas of the company and who have decision-making authority. The committee should be able to make decisions on behalf of the entire organization. If you're a small team, or a team of one, consider bringing in at least one or two other people who understand your business, what you're seeking to achieve and that you respect who may have diverse perspectives to help you see blind spots.
Step 2: Choose a prioritization method
Having a prioritization matrix will help you objectively compare and contrast the different projects in order to determine which ones should be given priority. The matrix should have the following headings: Importance, Urgency, Resources Required, and Risk. At Impact Management Group, we typically leverage the WSJF method (Weighted, Shortest Job First), which measures the Cost of Delaying a given initiative based on a weighted score across 4 key categories (value, urgency, risk), divided by the denominator of job size (how big/complex/expensive) is the initiative.
Step 3: Size your initiatives
The product of the three sizes of value, urgency and risk divided by the job size will give you a weighted average. The largest weighted averages are the suggested priorities and reflect the most impactful, smallest job size efforts. Again, these are suggestions, and the power is in the conversation.
Now you should have a list of projects that will provide the most value with the lowest effort. From here it's time to discuss, horse trade, challenge assumptions, disagree and commit!
Pro Tips:
Choose a sizing method like 1-20 when ranking/sizing each initiative and category. We (as humans) are terrible estimators, especially when something is a bit more fuzzy. Let's not kid ourselves with false precision. Sizing is a perfect way to do this! It's purposefully subjective.
"Find your chicken!" If you think about sizes like animals, for each category find the smallest animal first (e.g. a chicken), and then rank everything else against the smallest animal (is it two times as big as a chicken? 10 times?)
Rank each category first (e.g. size the 'Value' category first across all projects), don't rank each project across all categories. Remember, you're looking to do relative sizing of projects against each category.
Iterate! Once things start getting moved around it may make sense to go back and update some scores as new information comes in or changes are made
Step 4: Finalize Priorities & Communicate
After the committee has discussed and come to a consensus on the prioritization, it's important to communicate these priorities throughout the organization. This will help ensure that everyone is aware of what needs to be done in order to achieve the company's goals and objectives.
Wrapping Up
Ultimately, in order to achieve organizational focus in 2022 it is important to take a step back and look at the different projects your organization has on its plate. By creating an objective list of priorities you will be able to ensure that everyone knows what needs doing--and by when--in order for your company's goals & objectives to come into fruition.
Companies, and especially entrepreneurs are used to doing a lot simultaneously, but remember that we are, as humans, terrible multi-taskers (more on that later), it's critical that we create focus. I encourage clients to 'maximize the work not done' to maximize the impact of the work in focus. A best practice here is to break down your initiatives into outcomes you can achieve quarterly so that you can decide to punt, pivot or persevere.
If you need help at all when it comes to prioritization feel free to reach out to us at Impact Management Group and we would be happy to support you!
