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The Decision Matrix

Have you ever found yourself in a situation where you have 10 or 12 things that you need to prioritize? Often times in life, we have to set priorities, and usually they are relatively easy to set - as many of them tend to be set FOR us. And that's OK that some priorities are set for us, maybe its taking care of someone near and dear to you? Maybe its just a pressure from your work. We all have them.

But its the other priorities that can sometimes get pushed back because we don't know what we want most. What often happens is that we tend to do nothing in the face of not wanting to make the wrong decision. And last I checked - doing nothing rarely gets us anywhere.

SO, I have often used a simple Decision Matrix to help me sort out larger lists of options. They are relatively simple to do, and they can sometimes lead to some surprising results. Its a bit tricky to explain, so I'll do my best. Feel free to ask questions in the comments field if you need more explanation.

To start with its a matrix - almost a grid (in fact - you can use Excel to make one of these really quite easily). Take your list of items (we'll say there are 10 items for the sake of this example), and list them down a vertical column to the left of your work area/page. We call this column the Sort Column Order of preference is not important at this point.

Once you have listed the ten items down the column on the left, re-write the same items in the same order at the top of the work area/page moving to the right. We call this the Comparison Row.

Now you should have a grid - just like an excel document. Now, starting at the top of the Sort Column, start comparing each item to the other items in the Comparison Row.

For every time the item in the Sort Column is "better" than the item in the Comparison Row, simply place a 1 in that space and move right to perform the next comparison. If the item is not as preferable as the item in the Comparison Row, then leave the area blank.

Repeat this until you have compared every item in the Sort Column with every item in the Comparison Row. You will have notice that you will have compared everything twice and that there is a diagonal line of comparisons where you have compared the same item against itself. Feel free to discard the self-comparisons.

Next, moving down the Sort Column, count the number of "1"s you have in the row to the right of it. In essance, how many times did it "win" against the Comparison Row. Tally the "1"s and place a score at the end of the row. Repeat this tally process for all the items in the Sort Column.

At the end, you will notice that the tally of items should start to shed some light on what's at the top of your list and what's at the bottom. For any ties in scoring, simply compare what was chosen as the 'winner' in your Decision Matrix.

Try it out. I know its a little complicated, so I've added a diagram to further illustrate.

posted by Mark @ 5:24 PM