Introducing the ‘Choozatron’ to help you prioritise better

Some years ago I argued that we couldn’t have more than one top priority at a time. I was told that was nonsense. But the outcomes spoke for themselves: both of our ‘top priorities’ failed – not because the ideas were bad, but because the focus was split and resources diluted. Neither got what it needed to succeed.

If two goals of equal importance are competing for the same resources, they will pull an organisation in different strategic directions and neither will get the time, money and attention they need to be successful. One will inevitably rise above the other eventually – or both will suffer from being underserved.

This becomes particularly stark for small organisations. For example, a charity comprising two staff and a volunteer will have very limited resources between them, but can feel bombarded by apparently conflicting demands from trustees, funders and service users. They can’t do much more than one thing at a time, so how do they decide what needs doing first?

A little while ago I built The Little Big Plan to help groups with little marketing expertise identify who they need to reach, and how to reach them, in order to meet their goals. It encourages them to discuss the issues with colleagues so they can narrow their focus strategically.

But what if you seem to have lots of different critical goals? You need to attract funding but you also need to demonstrate impact, for example. How, as a small group on a shoestring, do you figure out which to prioritise first?

Choozatron to the rescue!

The Choozatron is a little game I’ve built that uses the principle of Paired Comparisons to weigh different choices against each other.

I am a massive procrastinator, and have been notorious for not being able to make decisions. I tried various different tactics over the years, but then one day I discovered paired comparisons – and it changed everything. It doesn’t always give me answers, but it always brings things into much clearer focus for me, which in turn makes choosing one thing over another a lot easier.

The Choozatron takes your candidates for prioritisation and presents them back to you at random, two at a time, until all combinations have been exhausted (you will never see the same pair twice).

For each pair, you must choose which is more important than the other. At the end, all of your choices will be ranked by how often they were chosen.

You can save these scores to your device or copy them to paste somewhere else.

Of course, it’s quite possible to end up with a draw. If that happens, you can try narrowing it down further by repeating the exercise with just those choices.

The Choozatron currently looks best on a mobile device, but works fine on a desktop too – and it will evolve.

Happy Choozing!

If you like the Choozatron, please consider making a small donation towards its development. (I’m not earning at the moment and there is hosting and hot chocolates to pay for!)

Thank you!