An Easy Trick For Prioritizing Like A Decision Scientist
A Handy Tool You Can Use With One Hand Tied Behind Your Back
On one hand, I can show you a simple and easy to remember trick for prioritization. On the other, well… you don’t really need the other. You can do this trick with one hand tied behind your back. It is that easy.
It is a trick designed for business, but you can use it personally as well. It won’t appear to be very scientific, but in actuality it draws completely on probability and statistics. Follow it and you will soon be much better at prioritization — which is a huge component of decision-making.
To begin with, you need five. Five priorities for your business, your quarter, or even your day. What are your top five ideas? What are your five biggest questions? What are your five biggest priorities?
Any of these questions are fine. You want them to be as comprehensive as possible. So yes, you need to be able to cut your list down to five. If that proves difficult, try to find two ideas that are close and put them together.
Now that you have five ideas or five priorities, here is a handy way to work through them. It is not perfect, but off-hand it is pretty good most of the time.
First point, you are going to have one thing. You know it. One of these things (priorities, ideas, questions, etc) is clearly important. You don’t need me to tell you (or anyone else for that matter).
As a former Head of Decision Science, I would always attempt to vet this idea first and quickly. Ninety percent of the time, the decision owners instincts were perfect. The one in ten times they weren’t… well, lets just say the owner themselves proved dreadfully incompetent. So you can rest mostly assured this idea is a good one.
The Next Point is a little more difficult but we will keep it simple. I swear. Note also, we are clearly not worried about order.
You have a second point, a second thing that is not as strong as the first. You aren’t as sure about this one. There is a little more doubt. So this will become your second priority.
Don’t stress too hard about getting this exactly right. If you happen to flip these first two things, they will still get done. Being a little bit wrong is not a big deal with this model. From here, things get more interesting. Though no more difficult, so long as you can allow yourself to let go.
Your Next Point may feel strong, but there is something different about it. It is not as straightforward as the other things in your list. Perhaps it requires help or information you don’t have. Maybe it needs a lift?
The point being — it is good idea but maybe not for you to do. This thing should be outsourced, delegated, or otherwise sent for a ride. It will get done, but not by you. You will need to prioritize keeping an eye on it. If you are less certain about this choice, just be sure to control the budget. If it proves to be weaker than you thought, just try to invest less. If it proves to be better, devote more resources.
The Next Point is a bit weaker than the others. It is that idea or priority that you really want to do but you realize the timing just isn’t right. But you don’t want to let it go…
No problem. Put a ring on it. Make a commitment to come back to it later. But for now this idea, priority, or question is no more than a promise. Let it wait.
At this point, the percentages should be obvious. You prioritized the top 60%. Statistically speaking you have limited over commitment but also took a safe cut at focusing on your highest reward options. And hopefully, you have a good sense of where we have arrived.
You understand the next image that is coming. You recognize that this system is about identifying the truly best ideas and letting the rest go. You know that the last point is one that just isn’t any good. Not now, at least. It is the weakest of your five and the one you need to sacrifice to get the others done.
Last Point… wait, not the image were you expecting? Is there really a point to showing an image of the thing we told to flake off? Stop being so negative.
Thanks to our model we can take the bull by the horns. We know the two things we need to prioritize first. We know the three things we love, but will rely on others for a little help on one. And once we complete our One Thing, we can hang loose knocking out our other priorities. And if those get completed, remember you made a commitment.
You will likely never get to that last point. Almost no one does. But if you happen to conquer all the others, feel free to put time on it.
You will certainly know how to show me that I was wrong!
Hopefully you enjoyed this simple trick. Overweighting and underweighting is a tried and true method. It is used by plenty of professional and executive coaches, as well as any number of wall street investment firms. It is a fairly scientific form of benchmarking and risk management. All we did was give you a hand to remember it. Thanks for reading! And good luck prioritizing!
For more on prioritization tricks:
