Looking at the Impact Matrix

This helpful little tool can help you make better decisions

Lots of Good Ideas and Nowhere to Go

Let’s say you and your team has come together and after wrestling with a problem you are facing, you were lucky enough to come up with some pretty solid solutions. At first glance, you almost think, “Wow. There may actually be too many solutions here, can we pare this down a bit?”

Well, the answer is of course, yes. And this handy little tool can help you do prioritize what you can do (and maybe, more importantly, what you shouldn’t do). The tool is called an Impact Matrix and is often learned by those in the Lean Six Sigma world to help improve solutions for problems that are faced.

Let’s dig into the matrix.

Impact Matrix Explained

Above is a basic chart; the rows show two categories, high impact and low impact. High impact are those solutions that if you know you put them to use you will get a positive result. Low impact items are those items that you are not so sure of. You may get a positive result, but the jury may still be out.

High control items are those items in which you have high control over the resources needed to make the solution happen; you have plenty of budget flexibility or maybe you have the staff team in place to undertake the solution. Low control items are solutions where you really have needs in order to pull the solution off.

Take your list of solutions and place them in the three boxes. Once you have your solutions sorted, here is a quick guide to go through the boxes listed.

Box 2 - Solutions to Implement; these solutions have a big payoff and should be easy to implement.

Box 3 - Solutions to Consider; these solutions, while easy to implement, may not have a great payoff for the organization.

Box 1 - Solutions that are Possible; these solutions will be great if you can pull them off, but the implementation is going to be a huge problem.

Box 4 - Solutions that aren’t really Solutions; these solutions are going to take a lot of effort to pull off and the payoff isn’t there. In other words, the juice isn’t worth the squeeze.

What do you want to work on?

Is there a piece of information you want to know that maybe I can help you? Shoot me an email at pinnaclestrategiesltd@gmail.com and as a paid subscriber, you are entitled to a free one-hour consulting session. We can sit down and talk and figure out where we can take you and your organization, including a deeper discussion on logic models!

Thanks for subscribing and be well!

Bill