How to Prioritize Goals

Once multiple goals have been defined, it is important to define their priority. While some goals are critical to the success of the organization, some goals might only be nice to have.

With limited resources it is necessary to differentiate between these two categories of goals and to assign resources to those goals that promise to have the biggest impact on your business.

Identifying High Priority Goals

Some criteria to identify which goals are high priority and which goals are low priority are:

• Impact on business performance or profitability
• Value of the organization on certain goals
• Which goals are challenging, which goals are easy to achieve
• Suitability team to work on certain goals

Using these criteria it is possible to rank the goals into different levels. Usually three levels A,B and C are used to describe the different priorities of goals.

Priority A: High Priority Goals with main focus

Priority B: Medium Priority Goals with optional focus

Priority C: Low Priority Goals with no current focus

Selecting the right goals to work on

All goals with priority C should be immediately put on hold or at least be put aside for the time being.

Goals with priority A are the goals that should receive the main attention with regards of resources and management attention.

Goals with priority B should only receive attention and focus once the goals with priority A are achieved.

Of course it might be necessary to prioritize goals within one level as well. The same rules apply here as well and you will end up with the level AA AB and AC. After that you can apply the same rules to identify which goals get highest priority and which goals will be worked on at a later time.

Bernhard S