My sense is that being good at prioritization is more about the mindset than following some plan, and it involves thinking through the paths to impact for every decision, every day.
I don’t strongly disagree with this. (Though based on conversations we’ve had elsewhere I’d guess I’m still somewhat more positive about plans than you are.)
However, I actually think of day-to-day prioritization decisions on one hand and the kind of strategic planning I’d like to see more on the other hand as two quite different activities and to some extent skill sets. I think they are both important, and complement each other well.
I think one major difference is which decisions you’re thinking about in the first place, and in particular how reactive versus proactive you are.
A lot of prioritization decisions are responding to a specific stimulus such as someone inviting you to give a talk or proposing a joint project. Others at least are very salient, e.g. because they concern the allocation of resources that are available by default—such as staff time. For these—and more broadly once you’ve identified a specific decision as important to make—I agree that following some explicit plan usually won’t add much.
However, there are important prioritization decisions that will never, or only too late, become salient by following day-to-day incentives. Have you really considered the full option space of how to reach your goals? Have you thought about how to prevent low-probability risks to your organization? Have you developed metrics that tell you whether you’re on track well before you can recognize obvious problems or achievements? Can you get more data to help you make decisions? I basically think that good strategic planning processes are a glorified checklist that direct leadership attention to issues that might otherwise be overlooked.
For example, I’ve seen all of the following happening (not at CLR):
Some years into a program, management wants to do an impact evaluation but hasn’t done a baseline assessment. They can describe how their target audience is doing now, but when assessing change they have to rely on memory.
Some months into a program, management realizes that some aspects don’t work well for some of their target audience. They say “it seems like we’ve designed a program for people who are like us, but actually some members of the target audience are quite different”, and make changes.
Seeing what in my view are clear and basic mistakes like these on one hand and skepticism about strategic planning on the other hand reinforces my view. These are paradigm cases of mistakes that standard strategic planning processes have been designed to avoid. For example, any material I can think of will emphasize baseline assessments (and more broadly planning for the ability to evaluate impact from the very start) and the need to understand your target audience e.g. through interviews or other ways of data collection.
I don’t strongly disagree with this. (Though based on conversations we’ve had elsewhere I’d guess I’m still somewhat more positive about plans than you are.)
However, I actually think of day-to-day prioritization decisions on one hand and the kind of strategic planning I’d like to see more on the other hand as two quite different activities and to some extent skill sets. I think they are both important, and complement each other well.
I think one major difference is which decisions you’re thinking about in the first place, and in particular how reactive versus proactive you are.
A lot of prioritization decisions are responding to a specific stimulus such as someone inviting you to give a talk or proposing a joint project. Others at least are very salient, e.g. because they concern the allocation of resources that are available by default—such as staff time. For these—and more broadly once you’ve identified a specific decision as important to make—I agree that following some explicit plan usually won’t add much.
However, there are important prioritization decisions that will never, or only too late, become salient by following day-to-day incentives. Have you really considered the full option space of how to reach your goals? Have you thought about how to prevent low-probability risks to your organization? Have you developed metrics that tell you whether you’re on track well before you can recognize obvious problems or achievements? Can you get more data to help you make decisions? I basically think that good strategic planning processes are a glorified checklist that direct leadership attention to issues that might otherwise be overlooked.
For example, I’ve seen all of the following happening (not at CLR):
Some years into a program, management wants to do an impact evaluation but hasn’t done a baseline assessment. They can describe how their target audience is doing now, but when assessing change they have to rely on memory.
Some months into a program, management realizes that some aspects don’t work well for some of their target audience. They say “it seems like we’ve designed a program for people who are like us, but actually some members of the target audience are quite different”, and make changes.
Seeing what in my view are clear and basic mistakes like these on one hand and skepticism about strategic planning on the other hand reinforces my view. These are paradigm cases of mistakes that standard strategic planning processes have been designed to avoid. For example, any material I can think of will emphasize baseline assessments (and more broadly planning for the ability to evaluate impact from the very start) and the need to understand your target audience e.g. through interviews or other ways of data collection.