One time, I was in a meeting with six consultants, and our customer asked us to consider an honest but compelling question:

“How do we prioritize our projects when we don’t have (or follow) a strategic plan?”

We were providing some rather unique consulting services that were in high-demand at an enterprise level. So it became vital to determine how to filter all of our incoming projects.

However, what came out of it was a discussion so rich, so layered, and so nuanced that I had to capture it, add to it for completeness, and share it with you. The really interesting thing was that no one consultant had the same method for prioritizing or the same focus.

You may be familiar with the Eisenhower method of prioritization. It was made famous by Stephen Covey, but it was Eisenhower who reportedly used it to determine his own priorities throughout his career. The following matrix is an example of the Eisenhower method of prioritization:

A basic “Eisenhower box” to help evaluate urgency and importance. Items may be placed at more precise points within each quadrant. The time management matrix above as described in Merrill and Covey’s 1994 book “First Things First,” showing “quadrant two” items that are important but not urgent and so require greater attention for effective time management.

And while it’s seems a little easier to determine priority based on urgency and importance for yourself (which is what Eisenhower’s model is ideally suited for), how do you determine the varying degrees of importance at an enterprise level?

In our meeting, which had three doctorate-level professionals, we discovered there are numerous ways to define “important” in terms of prioritizing.

If you are prioritizing for yourself, you would define priorities based on your values, those things you hold most dear. For example, they could be:

• Family
• Friends
• Relationships
• Healthy
• Vitality
• Impact
• Learning
• Peace of Mind
• Adventure
• Variety
• Excitement
• Abundance
• Wealth
• Spirituality

Values become the filter and the basis by which you do everything personally. Values also become the foundation of your goals. Your values and goals should determine what decisions you make and what actions you take – or how you prioritize.

Likewise organizations should have a set of core values, goals, and a strategic plan that drives their collective decisions and actions.

But what happens if you don’t have any defined core values, goals, or a strategic plan – or at least follow the ones you have? It seems ridiculous that an organization that employees hundreds or even thousands of people wouldn’t have a workable strategic plan. However, in my observation as a consultant to over 300 organizations, this is more more common than you might think. Why? Because many organizations make strategic plans, but allow operational priorities or others distractions (like a merger, acquisition, or Wall Street demands) to overlook or postpone those great plans.

Below, I offer multiple options for prioritization, some you might never use, but some might actually be intriguing.

1. Go with your gut – Based on what you / your team / your leadership knows of the environment, you make up the prioritization as you go.
2. Highest mission impact – what actions or projects will allow you to do the most for your mission?
3. Greatest good – what actions or projects will allow you to have the greatest impact on the most people?
4. Cost, Budget, and Funding – What can the organization afford to do? Do we follow the money and work on those projects that are actually funded? What about those that are not?
5. Available resources – What resources does the organization have available? Are there limitations on resources and what they can handle? how much can our resources reasonably take on and be successful?
6. Urgency – Is there a time-based need to pursue this project or action?
7. Greatest value to the organization – When I worked in business development, we prioritized those opportunities that had both the highest economic value, the highest win probability, and the lowest risk
8. Project visibility – Do we look good from a perception perspective if we pursue this action or project?
9. Political factors – Which actions or projects are politically popular versus unpopular?
10. Customer Type – Do we prioritize according to customers types? Do we serve internal customers first or external customers first?
11. Likelihood of Success – In business development, this was our win probability. However success could be project completion, lower risk, higher margin, or simply the ability to deliver on your promises.
12. What Senior Management wants – In the reality model (as I like to call it) there is prioritization according to what senior management wants, and they ultimately exercise the right to trump all others.
13. Organizational Function – Does this work fall within the scope of the organization or the project team?
14. What do the people want – There’s also a prioritization according to what is best for the people, that is taking on those projects that are the most intriguing, exciting, and skill building for the people involved. There needs to be alignment between what customers want and what the team does.
15. The Squeaky Wheel – This is when you make someone a priority simply because they are relentless and persistent in getting what they want (I know this, because I am often the squeaky wheel).
16. Environmental factors – What is happening in the broader economic, political, technological, social, generational, and broader global environment? Does our project have an impact or is it impacted by any of those things?
17. Competitive environment – Do we need to pursue an innovation project to be ahead of our competition?

Truth is, there are so many ways to prioritize projects. In a room of six consultants, we came up with six completely different thought processes and approaches. It was a psychologist’s dream – and one of us happened to be a Ph.D psychologist. By the way, what ended up happening in the end was that our consultant team put together an elegant project decision matrix complete with beautiful criteria, weighting, and scoring. The Director of the organization, a strong [willed] leader in his own right, appreciated and utilized the matrix as a data-driven means of justifying certain decisions, but often made the ultimate decision on certain priorities based on a combination of gut-level instinct, political visibility, environmental factors, mission impact, and available funding.

Question: How do you prioritize what is important or what comes first? How do you determine what / what not to pursue? You can leave a comment by clicking here.