Hello everyone! 👋

Welcome back to our newsletter, where we've been going into the details of each module in the Thinking Differently training series. 💡

So far in this deep dive series, we've talked about how important it is to clearly define the problem before starting to explore potential solutions. We also covered how to avoid some common pitfalls once you're ready to start brainstorming to lead to more productive outcomes. You can find previous newsletters on our Resources page.

Sometimes when you're brainstorming, you may end up with a lot of great ideas. While this may sound like a nice problem to have, I've often seen this lead to nothing moving forward because you don't know where to start! Or maybe your team has a long to-do list of tasks and projects but people aren't on the same page about which ones they should be tackling first. These are all perfect opportunities to bring in a prioritization technique.

From Priority to Priorities

Let's be honest: In today’s world, we’re rarely talking about just ONE top priority. It’s usually plural. Teams and leaders are always talking about their top priorities.

In Greg McKeown’s book Essentialism, he talks about how the word 'priority' came into the English language in the 1400s. It was singular and it meant the very first thing. It stayed singular for the next 500 years. Only in the 1900s did we pluralize the term and start talking about priorities!

But if everything is a priority, then doesn't that essentially mean that nothing is a priority? Prioritization is important because we have a limited amount of time in a day and a limited number of people on our team or at our company, and as much as we would like to, we can’t do it all. We need systematic ways to organize things to determine how and when to spend our time. ⏱

My Favorite Technique

I've researched and used a lot of prioritization techniques, and this one remains at the top of my list. It's useful for teams in so many scenarios, and I also use it for myself as an individual! The use cases are endless. This technique is called 🥁...the impact vs. effort matrix!

Here's what it looks like. We'll go through each quadrant one by one.

🙌 Quick Wins: This quadrant represents your low-hanging fruit! These items are things you believe are going to have a big impact, and they aren't going to take a lot of effort.
 

🗂 Big Projects: These are things that will take a lot more effort, but you still anticipate high rewards.

📋 Tasks: These might be easy to cross off your to-do list, but they aren't going to be super impactful. However, they may still be important to drive your work forward. Examples of these could be routine or administrative tasks that you need to fit into your schedule.

❌ Ignore for Now: The importance of finding the things that you can completely remove from your to-do list is often overlooked, but it's a key part of prioritization! For the items in this quadrant, the impact is too low for the effort you’d have to put in. Some people might say that “the juice isn’t worth the squeeze.” 🍋

How to use this matrix with your team: You can quickly do this activity at the end of a brainstorming session, or you can schedule a working session focused solely on prioritizing your team's backlog using this matrix!

Start by deciding how you want to define impact and effort! Some examples of impact may be financial benefit or customer satisfaction, while common definitions of effort include time and cost.

Gather your team and stakeholders and place the items your team needs to decide between on sticky notes on a whiteboard (either in-person or on a virtual board). Place the first sticky note in the center and move it up or down depending on where you think it should fall on the impact scale. Then, move it left or right depending on how much effort you think it will take. Repeat for all stickies!

Once you start to display things visually, it becomes easier to start to evaluating the impact and effort of items relative to each other. So for example, at the beginning of the session, you may have Item A at a certain level of effort but then when you get to item D, you realize that item A needs to shift to accommodate where you think item D goes relative to it.

Once you've categorized everything, you can start with your quick wins, decide how to fit in your tasks, and determine if there's any big projects to start now or if you'd like to schedule those for later. 

Check out this Prioritization Party Miro Template to get started! 🎈

Ready to Transform the Way Your Team Works?

There are so many prioritization techniques to choose from, and they each have their pros and cons depending on things like your team dynamics, the amount of time you have, and the number/type of items you're prioritizing. No matter which one you choose, there is value in choosing something and moving forward vs spinning your wheels and doing nothing!

In the Prioritization Techniques module of the Thinking Differently training series, you learn about and practice:
 

💡 The importance of effective task prioritization

💡 Techniques to add structure to prioritization decisions, both for individuals and teams

💡 How to combine defining the problem, brainstorming, and prioritization to rapidly solve problems

If you're looking to increase the collaborative problem-solving skills on your team in a way that focuses on action, Thinking Differently could be the right fit for you. Email me directly at caitlin@thinklysolutions.com and we'll find some time to chat!

Until next time, keep thinking differently!

Caitlin

P.S.

❗️New content alert! I've published a free resource guide called Leading Differently. Check out this guide here to learn more about the importance of human-centered and iterative mindsets in leveling up your leadership skills.