Prioritisation
The importance of prioritising at all levels
Being faced with multiple strategic and operational challenges at any one time, whilst maintaining day-to-day service levels and making progress towards agreed organisational improvements all within limited levels of resource inevitably calls for a stringent approach to the prioritisation of institutional activity.
Indeed, prioritisation is a management discipline that needs to be exercised successfully at all levels of strategic planning and implementation, whether in reference to what targets make it into your vision statement, what objectives you set to realise your vision within your strategic plan and what activities you choose to devote most resource to achieving in pursuit of your objectives.
Clearly it is important that decisions regarding relative priority are made not on a whim or the personal preference of an individual, but according to a rigorously applied set of criteria which not only helps to create an objective definition of importance but also helps quantify the implications of not proceeding with it.
Prioritising your strategic objectives
An obvious starting point in this process is by determining how closely aligned the activity in question is with the strategic objectives outlined in your plan. If no link is discernible, or is of a distinctly weak and tenuous nature then obvious questions should be asked as to why resource should be devoted to it. But this alone is not enough to effectively decide where your priorities should lie - especially when faced with multiple, equally worthy, candidates.
There are numerous tools and techniques designed to identify the relative importance of competing proposals and suggestions. When it comes to agreeing high-level strategic priorities, such as determining which objectives should form part of your strategic plan for the next 3-5 years techniques designed to assess the broader context within which the institution operates such as PESTLE analysis can be valuable. Using a Boston Matrix can assist in determining the relative demand for and popularity of your offerings and how this is likely to change in the future.
Prioritising your activities in support of your strategic objectives
Tools and Techniques
Once your strategic objectives have been agreed, use of a Balanced Scorecard helps you think about your organisation from four different perspectives and to question how the initiative under discussion will impact these four aspects. The JISC-funded espida project is based on a Balanced Scorecard approach and uses it to aid in the creation of business cases for proposals that may not necessarily offer immediate financial benefit to an organisation, but rather bring benefit in more intangible spheres.
Techniques such as Clariscope and using an Urgent/Important matrix can all help to reach agreement on where best to target resources as part of a transparent and objective options appraisal process.
It may, of course, be the case that all the options on the table seem equally worthy of attention. Perhaps they are all closely aligned with the institution's strategic objectives and could all be reasonably described as both urgent and important. On such occasions it may help to differentiate between the choices available by considering the consequences of not doing them. This is the logic behind the concept of a Change Variable template.
It is important to note, however, that some proposed activities may, on the surface, seem less important than others when compared in isolation and on a 'like-for-like' basis. This risks overlooking the fact that a task which seems relatively inconsequential may actually form a vital 'link in the chain' and represent a critical element in the completion of a much more important target. This points to the fact that what is also needed is an appreciation of the activity in its true context. This is something which Precedence diagramming and critical path analysis can help you to define.
Though all of the above techniques have their own strengths and weaknesses the adoption of any one or combination of them should pay dividends simply by demonstrating to staff that there is an objective and transparent decision-making process in place. Communicating institutional priorities across the institution is an important part of this process and another reason for engaging in the kind of ongoing, constructive and open 'strategic conversation' with staff that has been referred to throughout. Adopting a Prioritisation Matrix can play a useful role in this regard by clearly articulating what the institution's priorities are and how competing proposals have been assessed against them.
