Which process do I improve?

Yes, What now?

Imagine you have several processes with problems, and you can only improve one at a time. Which process do you improve? How do you quickly make your choice, to get moving, without calling in expensive analysis resource or completing a complex scoring/weighting evaluation?

The answer is this - you can use a basic grid, Ease/Benefit, or Effort/Impact, or similar. Both are simple and effective means of visualising and prioritising ideas for change. Let’s look at Ease/Benefit.

Simply take a large sticky note and divide and label it as below - Idea, Ease, Benefit. Write down your idea or ideas, succinctly. One idea per sticky note. Then score Ease and Benefit, on a scale of 1 to 5, 1 being least, and 5 being most, for Ease and Benefit as appropriate. When scoring do so based on current knowledge and avoid getting drawn into technical discussions about what is or is not achievable. For our imaginary Non-Staff Expenses process, let’s say we scored as below:

This tells us that improving the process will not be easy, difficult in fact, whereas the benefit would be mid-range. We would likely not look to improve this process ahead of other processes, if at all in the short term. Certainly not ahead of our imaginary Recruitment process that as below, we have scored both Ease and Benefit at 3.