How to prioritize initiatives based on evidence

When?you're trying to achieve an aggressive objective, you'll?likely face a bit of uncertainty. In addition,?objectives for next year and the year after will be even more aggressive, so you need to start figuring that out now, too! You need to work differently when dealing with uncertainty.

After all, if you knew the answers you’d already be happily executing your way to bonus-ville.

Despite the fear of doing things differently, exploration makes you?more?efficient. Most leaders feel like they don't have time for exploration work, but you do. I suggest?putting exploration in the backlog or directly on the calendar. Moves the Needle's Project Prioritization board is a 2×2 poster that helps you visualize where to invest resources based on impact and evidence. It helps you determine where you need exploration work in order to optimize outcomes.

How to use (this is best as a team exercise or better, several teams):

First, we presume you understand what your objectives are and that they are quantified. In other words, numbers:

• grow revenues x%
• increase customer delight y%
• improve employee happiness z%
• decrease costs xx%
• improve time to market yy%

These can apply to this fiscal year or include future objectives as well. These numbers should be known and shared from the C-suite, as well as the relevant contributions from each level below.?(Are your teams organized as such? If yes or no, I'd love to chat with you so I can learn more.)

Second, we presume you've done some amount of analysis that establishes the gap between the objectives and where you are today.

Third, the tool. As a group, document all projects you have going on and those in the pipeline. One?project per sticky note. Each note should describe how this project, in a quantifiable way (even if it's a guess), contributes to closing the gap for specific objectives.

(Optional: brainstorm new ideas to tackle the gaps. Again, one?per sticky note.)

Fourth, each team in their own space, confers to place the sticky notes on the Project Prioritization board. Place the notes based on expected impact on the vertical axis?and the confidence that you have in the initiative based on evidence. (Evidence isn't base on 10 year old experience, googling the size of the iPhone market, or strong conviction. Bring the market-based data.)

When analyzing the results, two distinct outcomes are useful: 1) Are the teams aligned? How close are they in estimating impact and evidence??Egregious non-alignment should be fixed. Also, how can communication be improved to maintain alignment??Tip: Choose one member of each team to find a solution to the communication dilemma.

2) High impact, high evidence (top right quadrant) should already be where your resources are concentrated. The next level, however, is rarely if ever considered. High impact, low evidence (upper left quadrant) is opportunity land! Resources should be invested to gather more evidence. A team is assigned a mission to generate evidence within 90 days. If they can't, the project is killed. If they can, they are given another set of milestones to achieve.

I'll have more on the other quadrants next time.

I'd love to hear from you. Are you utilizing anything similar in your business?

Click here to download our Initiative Prioritization Board