 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. My name is Raph, welcome to Riser, where my mission is to help you go further faster in your career. Being able to prioritise 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 prioritise 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 prioritisation 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 prioritise 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 2x2 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 are 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 1, low effort and low impact ones in quadrant 2, high effort, high impact in quadrant 3 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 is 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 emphasising 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 prioritise. Initiatives that are in quadrant 1, 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 2 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 3, 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 4, 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 pick 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 favourite 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 prioritise 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 4 boxes, so I'm going to give it 2 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 5 stars, I'll give this one 4 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. There 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've found that a simple whiteboard with post-it notes set up works really well because they can be moved around easily and for this reason I've 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 enjoy 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 time, keep rising.