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Prioritize your Strategic Initiatives

Guest post by: Jesse Hopps

Article Overview: Strategic planning is a great way to identify which initiatives can add the most value to your organization. The next step is to prioritize initiatives with a systematic method. Use our downloadable Priority Index Tool to guide you through the prioritization process, and help you drill down on the value added for each proposed initiative.

Prioritize your Strategic Initiatives

Prioritize your Strategic Initiatives

Strategic planning is a great way to identify which initiatives can add the most value to your organization. The next step is to prioritize initiatives with a systematic method. Use our downloadable Priority Index Toolto guide you through the prioritization process, and help you drill down on the value added for each proposed initiative.

What are the Most Important considerations? Feasibility

• Customer Value Proposition (CV)- what value does this deliver?
• Economic Upside Potential (UP)- what impact could this have on revenue?
• Industry Attractiveness (IA)- How well is this competitively positioned?

Strategic Fit

• Fit with Company Goals & Objectives (CG)- is this aligned to our goals?
• Ease of Implementation (EI)- how difficult would this be to do?
• Skills & Resources (SR)- do we have the required resources in-house?

Risk

• Over Forecasted Budget (OB)- how likely is this initiative to go over-budget?
• Over Forecasted Timeline (OT)- how likely is this initiative to go over-time?
• Technical Risk & Complexity (TR)- how complicated is this initiative?

Action Plan:

1. Consult your Strategic Plan- review your strategic plan and add each proposed marketing initiative into your Priority Index Tool.
2. Evaluate each Initiative- score each initiative based on its feasibility, strategic fit, and risk, to obtain a score out of 100 for each.
3. Sort your Priority Index- once you have completed the scoring process, sort your initiatives by total overall score (highest to lowest).
4. Delegate & Execute- now that you have prioritized your initiatives, start with your most important & urgent projects. To optimize your efficiency, hand off less strategic initiatives to your team for completion.
5. Review Next Quarter- get into the habit of updating your strategic plan each quarter, and revisit this prioritization process to ensure you can adapt to changes in your business environment.

Bottom-line:

A strategic plan with out rigorous prioritization will not be effective. Develop a strong and systematic prioritization process to ensure you are delivering maximum value, given your time & resources.

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Article Tags: index tool, strategic initiatives, strategic planning, systematic method



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