Bummed I missed the call today.  Sounds like it was a good one!

This week I had my leadership offsite and we put the 2x2 matrix to work in order to prioritize our initiatives for the 2nd half of our year.  Photo attached!

We did this for our people initiatives, customer initiatives, leadership alignment and insurgent initiatives.  We spent almost 3 hours.  Was great to have people vote with sticky notes so that everyone had a say.

It was a great effort but we still struggled to agree to delay or defer items.  We finally got there.  We also found that we often had very different views on effort.  Some interpreted initiatives as having a high effort and some low.  So then it triggered a great discussion on why someone viewed the effort as high and why low.  It also triggered a discussion about how our leaders need to harness the power of our team versus viewing these initiatives as something they always need to personally drive and manage.

I also still found myself wanting to find a way to not remove initiatives and "settle."  It might have been the hardest for me to accept not doing certain things.  I definitely related to the article that oftentimes leaders overestimate what can get done by an organization.

Hopefully it becomes a twice a year effort to use the 2x2 matrix to help us prioritize!  It was a first step.  Ong way to go!

Dave