Another day. Another good idea. The same old budget.
Terry Richey
All nonprofits have an excess of good ideas. A management reality is that nearly all good ideas take staff time to execute. And every nonprofit has limited staff capacity. So how do you decide which ideas to run with and which to set aside? How do you make “fair” decisions among the internal competition for resources? How do you evaluate how much capacity an idea takes to develop?
Consider creating and “Idea Matrix”
When your marketing team is approaching “overwhelm,” take the time to create an Idea Matrix as a guide for evaluating the merit and feasibility of ideas, tasks or projects.
With the Matrix, the team assesses each idea from low to high on two scales. The first scale is “Effort required” If you want to include more than your staff time in this view, such as dollars needed, you could use “Resources required” as the scale.
The second scale from low to high is “Contribution to our goals.”
The first scale is ranked from left to right. The second from bottom to top.
For simplicity, you can think about the matrix as having four quadrants or zones, each with a different characteristic.
Here is an illustration of the Idea Matrix:
IDEA MATRIX
The Idea Matrix in action.
Jane is the CEO of a growing non-profit. With a marketing team of three, a development team of four and her executive team of four, there at at least 11 different views on priorities for marketing. Whether it is building more social media outreach, developing donor materials, or creating a video about the organization’s mission, the marketing team cannot keep up with demand.
Prioritization would ease the strain but it has been difficult to achieve. Jane asks the three teams to bring their ideas for needed projects along with projects in the works to a planning session and then puts each idea on a Post-it® Note. Each team member is asked to evaluate their project on the two scales: How much effort will this project require and how much contribution will it make to our goals?
One by one, the team members place their Post-its in position where they believe the project belongs on a poster-size Idea Matrix. As they do this, the team discusses the project’s positioning and moves the note by consensus if they do not agree with the original placement. This creates a lively discussion about goals and about effort required and as each idea is placed, the team clarifies their view of project needs.
Once all the Notes are up on the Matrix, the team begins to discuss the relative relationship between projects and makes adjustments to the location of specific Notes. Jane sees that 37 projects have been identified and ranked and that there is distribution in all four zones of the Matrix but a concentration in Zone 2, the upper right quadrant.
The array of projects and their relative placement on the Matrix provides a way to discuss what projects will get the green light and which would be delayed or not done at all.
The easy choices are in Zone 1 which ranks high on contribution to goals and low on effort. Everyone agreed that all of the projects in that quadrant should get the green light.
Another easy decision was the projects in Zone 4 which ranked low in contribution and high on effort. Again, everyone agreed that those projects should not go forward.
A more challenging discussion was around projects in Zone 3. These projects require little effort but they also make little contribution to goals. It was clear on seeing these projects that most were “political” in nature. The CEO wants it. We think the board would like it. A corporate partner asked for it. We’ve always done it. The team did triage on these projects putting some forward to be done and most added to a wish list for some future time.
The most difficult group of projects to build consensus on were those in Zone 2 where the contribution was great but so was the effort. In fact, this quadrant had a much greater share of projects on the Matrix. Everyone agreed that these projects could be the backbreakers for the marketing team and that picking which to do was critical to setting priorities. By discussion and consensus, the team divided the remaining projects into three groups: “absolutely must have;” “needed but could wait;” and “let’s find another way.” The “another way” category would explore using outside services to complete the work.
The Idea Matrix provided the marketing team, and management, with a roadmap of priorites for the work ahead and created a much deeper understanding of the time and resources required to complete projects.
If you are interested in this and other visual tools that can help increase the performance and focus of your team, visit the “Tools” section of our website: www.TimberlineStrategy.com. To explore a consulting engagement with Timberline Strategy, please contact us directly at terry@timberlinestrategy.com or Berkeley@timberlinestrategy.com.