The 1984 Impact Matrix

The Project

In the mid-1980s, I was working with a team of engineers from an aluminum company’s headquarters staff and their Labs to put together an 80-hour course on Flat Rolled Process Technology for their plant engineers - who only worked on one portion of the process, and therefore only understood “part” of the big picture. This was a key technology for almost all of their manufactured products.

A Project Steering Team chair assembled the key stakeholders and met with me to define the target audience, discuss and determine the business goals for the program, and then agree to some macro-learning objectives. Then, they identified 12 SME instructors from the Labs for me to work with to build the content for the pilot-test delivery that they wanted in a hurry.

Moving From Education to performance-based Training

The Project Steering Team agreed with me when, near the end of our first meeting, I postulated that there were at least 800 hours of content if not more, to boil down to 80 hours.

And that it would be darn difficult to keep this an “all-engaging” learning experience versus “a boring” content dump. And it would be difficult to keep the development, reviews, and updating of the 12 Lessons “on time”...and in time for the planned delivery date for that first pilot session. They agreed. But time was up. The meeting adjourned.

I was worried that this was going to turn into a real fiasco. I was thinking as quickly on my feet as my mind would go when it struck me. I recalled someone’s comment at an ISPI (then NSPI) conference a month or so prior about the beauty of the 2x2 matrix.

The Strategy

I decided to adapt that concept for my own needs, which were to boil down 800 hours of content (or more!) into a meaningful 80 and then help me to deal with all of the egos of the Lab's experts in trying to contain their content lengths to the “allocations.”

I asked my client in our planned post-meeting meeting to help me list the major steps in the flat rolled process. This was easy. This was a familiar listing or model in the company. There were 7. Those were listed horizontally across the top of my notepad page on the table in front of us.

We next listed the key characteristics, the metrics/measures of “flat rolled products.” This was more difficult. It was early in the quality game, and this hadn’t been done yet with enough involvement to ensure its survival from the NIHS (not invented here syndrome). There were 5.

I then explained to him that I intended to matrix those five measures against the seven major phases of the “flat-rolled process” that he’d already given me.

Those were listed vertically on the left side of my blank sheet hand-drawn 7x5 matrix. In the cells of this new matrix that I started calling an “Impact Matrix” to define the contents I was looking for - I wanted him to put an H for high, M for medium, L for low, and zero for no ... as in the “impact potential” of the process step to each key measure/metric of the final product.

I explained that this was the only thing I could use to focus his engineering instructor team of SMEs and keep them to their allocated time based on how well their content supported the high-impact areas of the matrix. If they weren’t talking about an “H” area, they should only do it quickly AND save the time for those more important intersections.

He was already ahead of me on its uses. We completed that task and began to reallocate time to each of the 12 instructors. And then he used it again for another purpose the very next day.

The Outcomes

My client went to the Labs director the next day to present this simple matrix.

What was going to work for me to allocate classroom time, to control content amounts and depths, and to inevitably trim-back content from some or many of the 12 SMEs - who would always try to fit their 10 pounds in 5-pound bags - because their topics were most important to them !!! - was going to work to allocate other resources to other efforts elsewhere in their Enterprise.

I was told later that the project priorities of the Labs had changed when everyone began to reflect on where the budget was currently allocated versus the potential impact of those efforts on the ultimate end results.

Their potential impact and other business factors, of course. It was pretty cool seeing it become a central, core icon with them later due to its repeated use in the 80-hour program.

It was used at the beginning of every Lesson as an “advanced organizer” by each member of the InstructorTeam as they “positioned” what they were about to talk about.

The ROI?

I don’t know what it was in dollars, but I wish I did. The beauty and simplicity of the 2x2 matrix - expanded with known variables - allowed them to more easily “see” and "rethink" their priorities.

The picture was worth many words! Thousands? Perhaps.

But it really helped me to control a "herd of expert engineering cats" who were to share their expertise with the rest of the company’s engineering staff from the plants, brought in to learn one of the key, complex technologies of the company!

?????

This article is adapted from one of my 2007 Quarterly Newsletter PDFs about my 1984 project - and can be found in this 2007 Blog Post: https://eppic.biz/2007/06/10/the-impact-matrix-an-application-of-the-2x2-matrix-tool/