How is your team focusing on improvement? Do you have 3 projects on the go, 10 projects or too many projects to really list on a page! We are great at making our organisations complex! 

Agility in an organization is more than just the ability to pivot quickly; it’s about harnessing the collective creative firepower of your team and clients to drive innovation and impact. But that can only be done with a finite amount of projects. 

I have found it helpful to be crystal clear about categorising projects to assess gain in deciding where to invest finite resources by using an Impact-Effect Matrix.

Steps to Complete the Impact-Effect Matrix:

1. Identify Themes: Capture all your current project workstreams in one place, then identify key themes that emerge as areas for improvement.
2. Define Impact and Effectiveness: Establish your criteria for assessing each theme’s impact (potential benefit) and effectiveness (feasibility and ease of implementation).
3. Plot on the Matrix: Place each theme on a matrix, categorizing them as low to moderate-impact/easy difficulty, high impact/easy-moderate  difficulty, high impact/high difficulty, low impact/high difficulty.
4. Prioritize: Start with low to moderate-impact/easy difficulty themes for immediate gain. A great way to target low hanging fruit, get match fit completing projects and celebrate early wins.

Develop Action Plans: Agree on a maximum number of active projects and concentrate effort into those. This gains momentum, focuses attention, and ensures benefits can be “banked” as projects are completed.