PRIORITIES: Determining Priorities for Focus and Investment
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Determining Priorities for Focus and Investment
It is not unusual for a planning team to identify 40 or more strategies as part of the planning effort. Yet an organization can easily fail by trying to undertake too many priorities and executing none of them well. So how do you prevent this from happening? How do you identify the strategies that should be given highest priority?
The Key Question |
When developing your strategic plan, would it be helpful if... There were a structured method for determining priorities for focus and investment?
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Here is how we help with determining priorities!
With the Drivers Model, we take a "widening-then-narrowing" approach to strategy development.
Throughout the Situation Assessment and Strategy Development phases, the planning team looks at "what we have done" and "what we could do." It is not unusual to identify 40 or more "potential strategies" - initiatives that could be undertaken.
However, the team has to get beyond potential strategies. During the final stages of strategy development, the planning team must select the strategies that will be priority focus: "what we will do." Depending upon the length of the planning process, we facilitate the team through either a standard or detailed prioritization process.
Standard Prioritization
- In the standard prioritization process, the team identifies criteria for evaluating the potential strategies, such as potential impact, likelihood of success and cost-effectiveness.
- Each of the planning team members then is given up to a minute to lobby the rest of the team by explaining which potential strategies should be given priority and why. This lobby period often results in people gaining a better understanding of the strategies and the potential impact.
- Following the lobby period, the planning team members use multi-colored dots to vote for their preferred priorities. For example, the planning team members may each be given four blue dots (worth three points each) and four red dots (worth one point each) and told they may place only one dot per potential strategy. The result is usually a significant separation between those strategies with significant support and those with little support.
- Keep in mind, however, that the voting process is by no means perfect. Therefore, following the vote, the planning team members reflect on the ranking and make final decisions on priorities. It is not uncommon for a team to choose to add or subtract from the ranking to arrive at a suitable set of priorities.
Detailed Prioritization
- While the standard prioritization process is often most appropriate, in some cases a more detailed process is needed. The detailed prioritization approach uses the same criteria-lobby-vote-reflect process but adds a weighted scoring step to provide greater analysis.
- After identifying the criteria, and before lobbying, the planning team assigns weights to the criteria to differentiate their relative importance. The team then scores the alternatives on each criteria using a 1-10 scale, with 10 representing the highest score. Finally, the scores are multiplied by the weight to get the weighted score as shown below in an example from a for-profit organization.
Potential Strategies |
Aligned with Goals |
Potential Impact |
Likelihood of Success |
Skills Match |
Unique |
Funds & Resources |
|
Weights |
4 |
4 |
2 |
2 |
1 |
1 |
Wt. Score |
Develop floor plans to maximize product profitability per sq ft |
10 |
9 |
8 |
10 |
2 |
7 |
111 |
Launch "true" catalog business |
10 |
9 |
7 |
7 |
2 |
7 |
106 |
Implement issue resolution tracking system to monitor customer issues |
10 |
7 |
7 |
9 |
10 |
4 |
105 |
Launch E-commerce |
10 |
10 |
5 |
5 |
2 |
5 |
102 |
Develop/expand window treatment and other new home categories |
6 |
10 |
6 |
9 |
7 |
4 |
96 |
Establish a focused and well-funded public relations campaign |
8 |
10 |
5 |
5 |
2 |
3 |
92 |
Develop an executive dashboard for measurements |
8 |
5 |
10 |
7 |
2 |
10 |
91 |
Train the buying and product teams in design skills |
4 |
8 |
7 |
9 |
8 |
7 |
86 |
Implement integrated multi-channel marketing strategies |
10 |
5 |
3 |
5 |
10 |
3 |
84 |
Implement greater internal control and loss prevention program |
8 |
5 |
5 |
7 |
2 |
10 |
81 |
We recommend that groups view the weighted scoring process as "input" to the final decision. As with standard prioritization, we encourage groups to follow up with lobbying, voting, and reflecting.
Conclusion
The Drivers Model identifies strategies for growth by engaging stakeholders in identifying barriers to growth and potential growth strategies, and focusing the planning team on defining positioning statements and measurable outcomes.
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