Prioritize opportunities.
Ranked on value, feasibility, cost, risk, and time to benefit — and argued with you, not handed to you.
A list of good ideas is not a plan. This step ranks the opportunities, and the ranking is a conversation: each one weighed openly, trade-offs named, the owner free to disagree and reorder. A priority nobody believes in is not a priority.
The five lenses
- Value — what it returns if it works
- Feasibility — whether your team can actually run it
- Cost — money and staff hours, both counted
- Risk — what breaks if it fails, and how badly
- Time to benefit — how soon you will know whether it worked
Why the owner reorders
Because the owner knows things the numbers do not: which change the team will accept, which season is wrong, which relationship matters more than the spreadsheet suggests. In the simulated consultation, the owner reordered the draft ranking himself, with reasons — and the final report kept his order, not the draft's.
Kill criteria, not wishes
Every priority gets a standard for killing it. Fill at least 60% of open slots within two business days, or the tool gets killed. No-shows down 3 points, or it goes. Priorities with exits are commitments; priorities without them are hopes. (Standards from the simulated example.)