Impact Effort Matrix (aka PICK Matrix, Action Priority Matrix, Impact Ease Matrix) - RATED!!!

hi guys today we're going to be unlocking another really useful prioritization method called the impact effort matrix and how you can use it to figure out how to make best use of your time and resources what opportunities to pursue or even how to focus your team [Music] hi my name is raf welcome to ryzer where my mission is to help you go further faster in your career being able to prioritize well is a foundational skill that's going to help you do your job efficiently and effectively but it's an important life skill as well today i'm

going to break down how to prioritize using the impact effort matrix what it is how to use it including some tips and traps the pros and cons of using it at work and we're going to rate it to help you decide if and when you want to use it and there's a power tip at the end now in case you didn't already know all of this is time coded in the description box below if you want to jump to a particular chapter so what is the impact effort matrix well in short it's a prioritization chart

that uses just two factors impact and effort to identify the activities giving you the best return on investment for your time or money these could be any initiatives ideas actions and more and it can also be used to enhance your personal task management because of its flexibility it's used all across the business world from product to projects team management strategy business improvement investments and the list goes on and on it's sometimes also referred to as the action priority matrix the impact ease matrix or the pick matrix there are a few different ways you can use

this as well but today i'm just going to cover the vanilla version how it's generally used in a business setting and for the sake of clarity i'm just going to be referring to any of the items that we prioritize today as being initiatives but like i said before there really could be anything so let's get back to the studio so once again we begin with our two axes one is representing the level of impact of whatever we are assessing this is usually some type of financial benefit and the other representing the level of effort usually

resources cost or time now using a scale of low to high on each of these axes we create a two by two matrix made up of four quadrants you'll need to define what you mean by impact and effort the more specific you are the better the results going to be and this exercise should be conducted as a team if it affects others so you should be including representatives of all the different business areas affected by this the next step is to assign our initiatives to one of these quadrants placing low effort and high impact ones

in quadrant one low effort and low impact ones in quadrant two high effort high impact in quadrant three and high effort low impact ones in quadrant 4 but it's not quite as simple as that because we actually want to place the initiatives as accurately as possible within each of these quadrants in order to do this it's helpful to replace low and high with a scale we'll use 0 to 10 instead but you should obviously use whatever's most appropriate for you using our scale we can now plot our initiatives within this matrix instead of just assigning

to a quadrant we want to do this as accurately as possible because we're going to make decisions based on the relative positions of these we're emphasizing this by placing a heat map in the background but this is only for you guys you don't have to do this in real life and by the way for clarity the numbers we have up here represent the different initiatives and not their priority ranking now placing these in the right spot is one of the biggest challenges you'll need to shift these around until you're happy with where they sit relative

to each other once we're happy with where these all sit here's how the matrix is used to prioritize initiatives that are in quadrant one low effort and high impact are the low hanging fruit we definitely want to implement these as they give us the biggest bang for our buck we don't usually have very many of these and if we did we probably wouldn't need to conduct this exercise the initiatives in quadrant two that are low effort and low impact we can consider doing some of these might be important for supporting higher value initiatives and others

might be able to be combined to yield far more impact for proportionately less effort initiatives that sit in quadrant three being high impact and high effort are where we are likely to spend some time figuring out what to do this is sometimes called the challenge quadrant these are often larger more complex pieces with higher execution risk meaning that more can go wrong when we try to implement them it can be helpful to break them down a little into pieces to see if one or two of these pieces could achieve most of the impact with far

less effort and reduce some of that execution risk as well and lastly initiatives that sit down in quadrant four are high effort and low impact so obviously these are undesirable if you end up with a lot down here your challenge is to see if there's some way to reduce the effort or increase the impact which might include examining the value they deliver and you might also want to explore alternative solutions so you can now see why this matrix is sometimes also referred to as the pic matrix as the acronym for possible implement challenge or kill

now a quick tip if you end up with too many opportunities to pursue you can try refining your prioritization by voting by giving each participant an equal number of votes to split however they like amongst the initiatives of their choice you might be able to separate the winners and the losers a little easier and if you take this a step further if each person has a chance to explain why they voted a certain way this might surface some unexplored rationale and could result in the definitions of impact and effort being modified now let's take a

look at some of the pros and cons of using this in practice starting with the pros it takes time and experience to master but conceptually it's very easy to learn it provides an intuitive visual that effectively represents reasonably complex relationships at a glance and for this reason it's also a great communication tool helpful in coalescing stakeholders around tactics to meet objectives and in presenting strategic choices and it's versatile and adaptable widely used across different types of work in teams and as individuals it can even be paired with other tools for example when assessing your backlog

of tasks you could use something like the eisenhower matrix to figure out what's most important and then use this impact effort matrix to prioritize your most important tasks to rarely hone in on where you should be spending your time and de-scope the tasks with less payoff and in this scenario you could actually use it as a mental model i'm a big fan of mental models because using them especially combining them can help you cut through complexity and solve problems in your head quickly now let's explore some of the cons even though it's more granular than

the eisenhower matrix because you're not just assigning to four buckets it is still simplistic i think that's really a function of still operating on only two dimensions there's more work to do to really understand both the impact and benefits but i think it can be a good starting point but the biggest con with this model in my personal opinion is its subjectivity don't be fooled the results aren't accurate most of this is due to our natural tendency to underestimate time costs and risks and at the same time overestimate the benefits something often referred to as

the planning fallacy which we'll cover in a future episode to combat this at least to a degree make a point of challenging yourself and each other to eliminate your biases and come to grips with the fact that reality might look more like this you can also use a couple of examples of previously completed initiatives as benchmarks i found this to be pretty helpful also be aware that the high impact initiatives often carry a higher level of risk so try to understand this and not fall into the trap of wishful thinking so now my favorite part

let's rate the impact effort matrix looking at the dimensions of usability accuracy and adaptability i gave usability 4 out of 5 stars as i've already said super easy to learn and start using and useful to prioritize anything rarely that has some impact and effort equivalent it's particularly useful in helping teams to coalesce and agree on courses of action and pretty quickly too i think it offers very decent payoff for the time invested and it's a great communication tool as i mentioned earlier in terms of accuracy we've already talked about some of the big pitfalls but

it is more accurate than just assigning to four boxes so i'm going to give it two stars and it's very adaptable as i mentioned earlier but i think because it's more accurate than something like the eisenhower matrix it's also a little less flexible as a mental model so because i gave that one five stars i'll give this one four stars for adaptability so impact effort gets a total of 10 out of a possible 15 stars now for the power tip why not mention this as a potential solution next time your team is facing competing priorities

now over and above the things that i've already mentioned as well as using good workshop practices which i'll cover in another video and i'll leave the links below here are some things that i think will help you get a successful outcome when conducting this exercise in a group setting firstly preparation is going to help particularly having good quality information on hand for each initiative secondly make it a fluid collaborative process i found that a simple white board with post-it notes set up works really well because they can be moved around easily and for this reason

i found that if one person is just doing this on their laptop it can be really frustrating for the others thirdly manage your time keep an eye on the clock and don't let one or two initiatives derail the discussion just agree to spend a set amount of time discussing each initiative and if you get stuck on one then agree to move on and come back later just keep the exercise progressing and lastly i've already spoken about this but challenge your assumptions remember the pitfalls and check your biases so there it is this is definitely another

one to add to your toolkit as a component that you can use standalone but also in combination with other tools if this is your first time here and you want to learn how to be more efficient and effective at work start now by subscribing and clicking the bell so that you don't miss anything if you have any questions let me know in the comments below and if you enjoyed this content hit the thumbs up button it really helps with the youtube algorithm and don't forget to share it with a friend or a colleague till next

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