So much to do, so little time
As a business owner/manager you have loads on your mind. There are the daily tasks that fill up your to-do list but also bigger ticket items. These can be:
New website
Create/review roles and responsibilities
Review processes and procedures
New CRM system
Generate more leads
New production line
New store
And so forth. The list can be endless.
While there is a plethora of ways to prioritise daily tasks (today/ASAP/whenever, the Eisenhower Matrix, etc.), prioritising bigger, longer-term and more complex projects is trickier.
Luckily, there is a handy solution.
To determine what to do first you need to consider the following aspects of each project:
Speed – how fast will it yield results
Impact – how much it will affect the business
Feasibility – is it doable and affordable/profitable
Each of these aspects should be scored on a scale of 1-10 where 1 is the slowest/lowest impact/lowest feasibility and 10 is fastest/most impactful/most feasible.
You then multiply the 3 scores to get an overall score for each project.
For example:
Project | Speed | Impact | Feasibility | Overall |
New website | 5 | 3 | 8 | 120 |
Create/review roles and responsibilities | 8 | 6 | 10 | 480 |
Review processes and procedures | 6 | 8 | 10 | 480 |
New CRM system | 3 | 9 | 6 | 162 |
Generate more leads | 4 | 8 | 5 | 160 |
New production line | 2 | 9 | 3 | 54 |
New store | 3 | 7 | 4 | 84 |
In this example you will prioritise the projects as follows:
Create/review roles and responsibilities
Review processes and procedures
New CRM system
Generate more leads
New website
New store
New production line
(The first 2 projects scored the same so unless new information is available it does not matter what you do first.)
It is important to score the 3 aspects first and multiply them at the end, as otherwise you risk letting prejudice dictate the overall scores.
How many of these projects you can do concurrently is a question of resources (time/money) so the next step is figure that out.
This is a crude but effective way to simplify complex decisions. It makes sense to use it before planning the next year’s budget as cost/revenue affecting projects will impact it.
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