The 4-grid prioritization framework is highly useful when you notice your team’s workload is high, when you’re worried about productivity, or when priorities seem unclear.
How long does it take?
30-60 minutes
What roles are there?
1 person is the facilitator (this is probably you, the reader), others are participants.
What are the pitfalls of this framework?
The impact of an idea can be highly subjective. Make sure everyone participates in the discussion about impact of tasks. Steer the discussion to focus on observations and data-backed arguments, to avoid creating a pitching contest between ideas.
Preparations
In-person meeting: Book a room with a white board or use a large paper sheet and draw the 4-grid, get some post-it notes and markers.
Remote meeting: Create a collaboration document similar to the white board picture. Here are templates you can copy for your use right away: Jamboard, Google Sheet
How it works?
Set the context. Tell people what you’re prioritizing, e.g. current tasks, new ideas, solutions to a specific problem, ideal customer profiles…
Have everyone write down their tasks/ideas in 5 minutes, one idea per post-it note. Have participants post their notes in a position of their choosing and group similar notes.
Use 2 minutes to move the notes on the whiteboard and talk through any disagreements as a team.
Now you have much better clarity on your team’s priorities. If there are still too many ideas in Easy wins and Big ideas, agree where to draw the line and deprioritize the rest.
Agree an owner and next steps to proceed with the two important categories: execute on the easy wins and make time for pursuing with the big ideas. Make sure each priority has a clearly agreed owner.
Have another prioritization session when you don’t have any high impact tasks to work on anymore.