When you take into consideration the limited resources you have with a small staff association, it is more important than ever to prioritize. It is easy to go through the motions of your day and not think about prioritizing but by allotting time to this task, you can maximize your staff’s time and resources by deleting obsolete tasks and replacing them with ones that will have a bigger impact.
Follow these guidelines to arrange your tasks, projects, tools and new ideas. The results may surprise you!
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The first step is to acknowledge the importance of prioritization. Just thinking about this concept will help you put into perspective the everyday duties and responsibilities of the staff as well as determining the value of new projects. If you’re reading this article, you can check this one off! |
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Determine your overall goal. Do you want your organization to be the voice of your industry? Do you want to provide a community for your members to interact? Do you want to raise money for a cause? |
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Identify your criteria. How will you measure success? You should have between 5 and 10 criteria. For example: does it produce revenue, will it increase membership, does it comply with your mission? |
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Identify your tasks, projects, tools and/or new ideas. This can be as simple as whether you get certain office supplies or as complicated as developing a new website. |
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Rate each criterion. What is most important? This will help to determine how you weigh each criterion. It is important that each criterion is not weighted equally, and probably more realistic. The results of this step will be different for every organization and if you are doing this process with multiple people, everyone should agree on the weight of the criterion. You will want to assign a percentage to each criterion so take the score for each criterion and divide it by the total for all of the criterion. |
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Measure each project based on each criteria. For this step, use an Excel with the criterion listed across the first row and the projects down the first column. Take it one project at a time and go across giving a 1-10 rating for each criterion. You will need to weigh each criterion according to the percentage you gave it in step 5 and tabulate the total in the last column. |
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Figure out the staff/money/other resources you have to dedicate and assign an amount of each to the project. |
Congratulations! You have just prioritized. Now you have the joy of starting (or ending) your project. Good luck and let us know how this post has helped you.
Stay tuned for Prioritization: Part 2 to see a full sample of this process and detailed instructions on how to execute step 6.
