Running a department, school or trust can sometimes feel more like juggling than leading: you have multiple competing obligations that all need your attention, and it’s too easy to try to do it all at once, ineffectively, or collapse under the weight and do nothing at all.

This is a problem common across all organisations and one that researchers have continually tried to fix. And what most end up suggesting are prioritisation matrices.

These have long been championed by leadership experts such as Peter Drucker (1967) and Stephen Covey (1989). Prioritisation matrices essentially help an individual to rank tasks against urgency and importance, thus ensuring that they can be sorted into the most effective order of priority.

What’s a good example of a prioritisation matrix?

One tool that continues to be popular is the prioritisation matrix often attributed to former US president Dwight Eisenhower. He used it to evaluate and rank tasks, projects or strategic options on the basis of weighted criteria.

The matrix consists of a visual grid, usually 2×2 with the following titles:

1. Urgent and important
2. Important but not urgent
3. Urgent but not important
4. Neither urgent nor important

Allocating items to the quadrants externalises the prioritisation process and makes it more intentional, leading to more considered and rational choices.

Now used across a wide range of domains, this original matrix has evolved into more detailed or context-specific tools such as the Cause-and-Effect Matrix, Weighted Decision Matrix, Productivity Framework and the Analytic Hierarchy Process.

It is important to recognise the bluntness of tools like the prioritisation matrix and the feasibility of actions such as delegation or elimination.

The matrix, like most reflective tools, should be seen as the start of a conversation, and may require deeper thought and personalisation to be truly effective.

Why might it help?

Promotes awareness
The simple act of listing tasks, responsibilities or options enables individuals to confront the volume of commitments, while the allocation process forces them to distinguish value from noise and externalise any internal biases.

Resists reactiveness
This purposeful pause enables leaders to resist the tendency to prioritise whatever is shouting the loudest and enables a more rational approach to decision-making. The slowed-down decision-making enables rational thinking to come into play.

Directs resource allocation
Over time, the matrix enables leaders to identify patterns in the way they spend their time and energy, evaluate whether the balance is optimal, and make changes if required.

How does it work?

Step 1: define the dimensions
The first step is to decide the dimensions that will be used within the four quadrants. As we saw earlier, urgent versus important is a common choice, but others include impact, risk, cost and efficacy. It is also important during this preparation stage to clarify what constitutes high or low in each category, so that items can be allocated accurately and reliably over time.

Step 2: list, evaluate and allocate
The next step is to create an exhaustive list of all current tasks, challenges or targets, which at this stage should be free of judgement and collaboratively created if possible. Once that is complete, each item needs to be judged against the agreed standard and allocated to the appropriate quadrant.

Step 3: reflect and respond
The final step in the process is to analyse the allocation and balance of items, gaining alternative perspectives if possible and moving items where required. Once this is completed, leaders can then responsively act, and common actions include:

• Important and urgent: do immediately
• Important and not urgent: delay
• Not important and urgent: delegate
• Not important and not urgent: delete
 

Potential pitfalls

Real-world leadership is rarely as binary as this matrix forces leaders to be, and so this can lead to oversimplification and misallocation.

Also, leaders are often “urgency addicts” and feel best when they are being productive, leading to an over-allocation of urgent items and bottlenecking.

A final pitfall is called temporal discounting: when leaders perceive items as less valuable because the reward is in the future, resulting in important but not urgent items being ignored.

My experience

My ongoing use of the matrix has confirmed what I probably already knew: I am easily drawn to the urgent and even more so to the quick wins that make me feel like I’m being successful throughout the day or week.

My professional growth has come from consciously focusing on the longer-term important and not urgent items and then going one step further to actually block out time to move them forward.

Chris Baker is school improvement and teaching and learning lead at Cabot Learning Federation, a multi-academy trust that runs 17 primary schools, 12 secondaries, one all-through school, two alternative provisions and three special schools