A Proven Tool to Focus Your Efforts on High Impact Activities
Imagine if you had a tool to help you make sense of the impact of your efforts and where they’re most needed. That's what an impact effort matrix does.
Small and medium sized teams are often overwhelmed with the amount of work that needs to be done and the number of people they have to do it. The impact effort matrix is a tool that can help them prioritize their work and make sure they are focusing on what matters most.
The impact effort matrix is a tool for prioritizing work. It helps them identify what tasks are most important and how much time should be spent on each task. It also helps them determine which tasks should be delegated to others or outsourced, so they can focus on what really matters to their organization.
The impact effort matrix is a tool that is used to classify tasks in terms of their level of difficulty and what impact they're likely to have on strategic objectives. The matrix has four quadrants, each representing the level of effort needed to complete a task.
The first quadrant, which represents the easiest and quickest tasks, is reserved for low-effort tasks like answering emails or making phone calls but have low impact on the groups strategic objectives. The second quadrant above it is for tasks that have a higher amount of impact than the first one but are still relatively easy to do. These include things like following up with a funder or writing a weekly email report that needs to be sent out. The third quadrant in the top right includes high-effort tasks that require a lot of time and effort but help drive results such as onboarding a key staff hire or launching a successful volunteer canvass operation. Finally, the bottom right quadrant is for long slog activities for which much effort is required but little results are achieved. A classic example of this is an initiative that requires time and energy that is done to please a key stakeholder such as a major donor or board member but which everyone knows does not add value to the strategic plan.
Imagine if you had a tool to help you make sense of the impact of your efforts and where they’re most needed. That's what an impact effort matrix does.
Use it to help you analyze the impact and return of your efforts and optimize for the highest value ones.