What is the Effort Impact Matrix?
At its core, the Effort Impact Matrix is a nifty tool that helps you assess tasks, projects, or ideas based on two key things: Effort and Impact. Think of Effort as the fuel you'd put in a car, and Impact as being how far you can get using that fuel.
Much like the better known urgent / important matrix, it’s generally presented in a grid matrix format with effort on one axis and impact on the other. In the matrix, you'll plot your tasks or projects based on how much effort they need and what kind of impact they'll have. Low effort, high impact tasks would be your golden nuggets or quick wins – the ones you definitely want to prioritise
High effort, low impact tasks or projects would be the ones you would be lowest priority and then in between you have the big projects (high impact but a lot of work) and the maybe tasks (they might not set the world alight, but if they’re easy then they could still be worth doing
Benefits of Using the Effort Impact Matrix:
One of the most challenging areas for most leaders is handling the volume of work that’s on their plate – both personally and from a team perspective. In between pinging from meeting to meeting, and handling the reactive stuff that comes from nowhere but can’t be ignored, it can feel like a thankless task trying to get anything meaningful done.
The Effort Impact matrix can be a strategic ally because it gives a simple but clear framework to evaluate what is and isn’t worth your time, energy and attention. As a mentor of mine once told me ‘Clarity comes first. Clarity is knowing what needs to be done, focus is about getting it done’. When you try to focus but don’t have clarity, you risk being a busy fool – working hard on things that don’t add value
When you take a pause and weigh up what needs to be done and why it matters, you can take the pressure off feeling like EVERYTHING is a priority and get clarity on what really is. You know you can come back to the other stuff, but for now the mental load is lower because you’ve taken the decision on what needs your focus for now
Practical Ways to Use The Effort Impact Matrix for Prioritisation
In a new role: If you’re anything like most of my clients, when you get a promotion or start a new role you’ll very quickly have a list as long as your arm of things that need to change. Every time you turn over a new stone that list gets added to, especially if the role is newly created, has been vacant for a while, or if the previous person wasn’t great
It can be tempting to kick of lots of different initiatives and changes, but that approach rarely works and can result in you gaining a reputation for being a bull in a china shop or someone who starts things with great enthusiasm but doesn't see them through
Being patient when you start a new role can be hard, but it often pays dividends. The effort impact matrix can help keep your focus on the evaluation phase of the various initiatives that all feel like a great idea. Getting under the skin of how much of an impact something will have is especially important – many a new leader falls foul of spending too much time in the ‘low impact’ half of the matrix. Knowing what’s a quick win and what’s a maybe baby is crucial in the early months
When overwhelm hits: If you’ve got a million and one things to handle, it’s easy to feel like you’re in Groundhog day. Each day you get to the end of the day having done ‘stuff’, but you know tomorrow is just going to bring more of the same. The temptation is often to work longer hours and try to push through, but that just leaves you exhausted as well as overwhelmed
Instead, taking some time to pause and plot out where on the matrix the various different elements of your workload sit can be really valuable. It often pinpoints things like
You’re not sure what the impact is or why you’re doing certain things so you struggle to even be sure what quadrant they go in
There are tasks sitting in the high effort, low impact quadrant that are draining you of the will to live and not really adding value. Time to negotiate ditching or simplifying them so they take less brain space
You’ve simply got too many different plates spinning in the ‘high impact, high effort’ quadrant. Some of them need to be put aside for now unless you can delegate or otherwise get some additional resource and support
I see these things happen a lot when people have a tendency towards being people pleasers – they’ve often accepted requests or even actively offered support that’s at their own cost. Boundaries are flimsy at best and some renegotiation is needed
Maintaining momentum on strategic projects: If the day job is taking up the majority of your capacity but you still have a responsibility to think and act strategically, then the matrix can help. Being realistic, you’re not going to be able to spend 20 hours a week on strategic projects if your operational responsibilities are taking up 30 hours or more of your working week. Using it for the ‘business as usual’ tasks is a useful first step with the aim of freeing up capacity.
But if you’re well organised and pretty savvy, you’re unlikely to find that you’re wasting hours on unnecessary nonsense. So where to go next? The key here is often picking just one or two priorities alongside the operational stuff. When I’m coaching I limit clients to an absolute maximum of three at any one time. Start with either a quick win or with breaking down a bigger project into chunks you can tackle one by one
Clients often hate the idea of doing this because they don’t want to let go of other stuff that’s important, but once they see the momentum and progress happening on the things they do choose, they realise the impact that making progress has on their energy and motivation, as well as on actually making a contribution to the strategic side of their role
After all, as the saying goes, “If everything’s important then nothing is”
When carving up responsibilities: The effort impact matrix is also great to use to facilitate discussions within a team. Something that feels high effort for one person might not be for a colleague with a different skillset. Being open and flexible to how contributions are made can be helpful, and the natural discussions that happen when doing the exercise as a team can also be eye opening
One way to create this discussion is allocate some time in a team meeting. Using a flip chart and post it notes, get everyone to write down on their post-it’s the tasks and project they are working on. Then put the post it notes onto a flip chart to plot where they see them – you can either use one flip chart for everything, or separate out operational / business as usual tasks from project based / strategic tasks
Then have a group discussion about where things have been plotted and whether people agree or disagree. Challenging what constitutes high / low impact as well as discussing what effort is involved to get the impact can be really helpful. It often brings to light that people don’t realise how much effort is involved or what else people have on their plate. And it’s not unusual for people to look at impact relative to other things they’re involved in rather than it being a business wide view
It can also be really helpful if you’ve got someone who’s either leaving, going to be away from work (e.g. for maternity leave or on a sabbatical), or someone who’s returning to work, or changing their working hours. They are all scenarios where the resource you’ve got available to support you is increasing or decreasing and so it is a useful exercise to either work with them on it individually or to look at how tasks can be allocated across the team as a whole
Need support with working through this for yourself or as a team? In addition to ongoing coaching support, I offer ad hoc sessions for exactly this kind of thorny issue. You can book and pay for a 1:1 session or email jacqui@practicalleadershipcoach.co.uk to enquire about team coaching support