If you're like a lot of business owners, you've probably got 1001 things on a list that you could be doing or should be doing. Most of us find that there's never really a shortage of ideas, the biggest issue is picking the key business priorities, that couple of things that we're going to focus on, and then actually execute and deliver.
But how do you prioritise the list and pick those fewer better items to spend my time on?
This is where we use a tool that we call The Hot Spot Analysis.
Why Hot Spot? If you can imagine a “hot spot”, it is where there's an enormous amount of focus and activity going on. And in that respect, what we want to do is to pick those two or three things that you're going to focus on for the year, or quarter, that is going to deliver the most value.
So how does the Hot Spot Analysis work?
It's really simple.
You take your list of ideas, it might be a list of 20, 30, 50, 100 items, start with however many you've got. Now create a couple of columns next to the list. The first column is whether it's easy to implement. And the second column is whether it's high impact.
There is a process here that you need to follow, and it’s a fantastic activity to do with your team.
Here are the Simple Steps to Setting Business Priorities:
- Go down the list and put a tick in the first column next to every item based on whether it is easy to implement. IMPORTANT: Stay in this column as you go down the list and follow it all the way to the bottom. These are your “Low Hanging Fruit” - you can capture them fairly quickly.
- Once you have completed column 1, move onto the next column - High Impact. Go down the list and put a tick in this column based on whether the item will have a BIG impact if achieved. When doing high impact stuff, that there's no guarantee of success, but if you can pull it off, it's going to deliver in a big way.
- The final step is to run down the 2 columns and identify the items that have 2 ticks - they are Low Hanging Fruit and High Impact. These are the items that you need to pursue!
This is a really simple, yet highly effective way to set your strategic business priorities and give yourself the best chance of success.
Good luck with it.
At Exit Advisory Group we help entrepreneurs maximise company value and exit at the top of their game.
We do this by giving business owners the tools and strategies to design more profitable, efficient and enjoyable businesses to own - that are also less dependent on them. When they choose to exit, they are in the best position to unlock the wealth in their business and be rewarded for their hard work.
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