by Dave Paradi
You’re probably coming out of Authority Intensive stuffed with dozens of ideas. So now that you’re heading home — where do you start implementing?
Here’s a quick document you can create now, that will help you prioritize your actions over the upcoming days and weeks:
1. Organize ideas so you know which ones to start on first
Create a simple table in Excel or Word (Excel allows for easier sorting or math). Use five columns:
Action — Describe the idea/thought you captured, briefly but completely enough you know what it is. The key is to turn each idea into an action so you can measure when it is done. Each statement should have an action verb, which can range from simply investigating something you heard about to see if it applies to your work, to making a specific change to an activity you are involved in.
Workflow step/Area of business — What step in your workflow or what area of your business does this apply to?
Level of impact — on a scale of 1 to 10, how much impact will this idea have on the success of your efforts? Decide whether this is short or long term, and how you define impact (less time, more visits, etc.), which will be different for each person.
Level of effort — on a scale of 1 to 10, how much effort will this take to implement? Based on perhaps time, money, involvement of others, lack of current skill set, or other factors.
2. Rank your ideas and find your priority tasks
After you complete those first four columns for each idea, then you can look through all of them. You might sort by one or both of the Level columns if you want. Now you’re ready to fill out the last column: Rank.
Give each idea a rank based on A, B, or C. Ideas rated A are those you will start working on right away. They may be the highest impact ideas, or they may include some moderate impact but easy-to-implement ideas if you need to show quick wins to the boss. Or they may depend on what area they are in and how much control you have over implementing them.
No more than 20% of your ideas should be in the A category.
Ideas rated B are those you will start to move to the active list as the A ranked ideas get done. The B rank should be used on 30-50% of the ideas.
The C ranked ideas are ones that would be great to pursue if the time and other resources permit. Ideas ranked in this category will likely never get done, unless something in the environment changes that alters the level of impact or effort and causes you to change them to a B ranked idea.
You can constantly adjust the level measurements and ranking as things change, new ideas emerge, and as ideas get completed from the list.
Editor’s note: Thanks so much to our attendee Dave Paradi for putting this quick process together for us! We strongly encourage you to take a little time to do this (adapting as you need to for your own tools and work habits) and start scheduling the time to work on those meaningful “A” actions.
About the Author: Dave Paradi has been recognized by the media and his clients as a presentation expert. He has authored seven books and four Kindle e-books on effective PowerPoint presentations. He consults on high-stakes presentations including one used to brief one of President Obama’s cabinet ministers. Participants in his workshops leave with practical steps they can take immediately to improve their presentations. Attendees say that they will never be able to look at another PowerPoint presentation the same way again because Dave redefined what an effective presentation should look like.
Learn more about how Dave helps speakers and presenters at his site: ThinkOutsideTheSlide.com.
Additional reading
If you haven’t checked it out yet, be sure and download one or two things to read on the plane from this reading list. We promise there will be something here that you’ll find useful to your content and your business!
The 2014 Authority Intensive Reading List
And thank you so much for connecting with us at Authority Intensive! It has been an absolute pleasure to meet you.