Every organisation has other organisations that it works with — whether as clients or partners. But how do you know whether the opportunities they bring are worth spending your time and resources on? That’s where this prioritisation matrix comes in!
Using a Whimsical template, it’s really easy to start a conversation about which partnership opportunities are worth pursuing:
- Add the names of the organisations (or projects) to the sticky notes, creating more if needed.
- Move the sticky notes to the relevant place within the grey box. More important orgs/projects go closer to the top. Immediate opportunities go to the left, whereas those further into the future go to the right.
- Remove the grey box to reveal four categories to help with your prioritisation and planning.
Target group: project team, management board, partnerships lead
Time: 20 – 30 minutes
Material: Template for Whimsical
Goals: prioritise the most important partnership opportunities for your organisation
The first thing to do is to change the names of the sticky notes to the right-hand side of the grey box. You can change them to the names of potential partner organisations. You can add existing partnerships. You can add project names. Whatever is useful to you.
Add more sticky notes by pressing the appropriate button in the Whimsical toolbar, or by duplicating one of the existing sticky notes.
Once you have all of the organisations and projects listed, move them onto the grey box. Pay attention to the importance of the organisation or project to your organisation. Does it align with you strategic vision, mission, and values? The more important it is, the closer it goes to the top.
Also pay attention to when in time the opportunity is likely to arise. If it’s already happening, put it all the way over to the left. If it’s not likely to materialise for some time, put it all the way over to the right. If it’s somewhere in between then… place it accordingly!
Once all of the sticky notes have been placed (and you will probably have many more than four) it’s time to remove the grey box. Click anywhere on the grey box and then press delete. The four boxes of a coloured background should appear.
Nudge your sticky notes so they fit completely within one box. They should not overlap into another. The opportunities, according to your initial categorisation should fall into:
- Immediate capacity building — these are important opportunities that are either already in progress, or can start in the next few days/weeks.
- Future capacity building — these are important opportunities which can start in the coming months.
- Strategic alignment — these are important opportunities which might take over a year to come to fruition.
- Drain on resources — these are opportunities which are not important to your organisation’s strategic goals. They may be already in progress, or they may take years to materialise, but either way they do not align with your mission and vision.
Take note of the grey box to the top-right. Capacity building can be thought of in many ways, but the more money, status, and impact the opportunity brings to your organisation, the more likely it is to further your strategic goals.
This prioritisation matrix is a conversation-starter to help visually plot what you and your colleagues think about the opportunities available to your organisation. You may end up moving the sticky notes around a bit after you’ve removed the grey background. That’s OK!
Click here to access the Opportunity Prioritisation template for Whimsical