What to fix first: how to rank the problems in a growing business 

Rank each problem by what it costs to leave it alone, how much effort the fix takes and what must be fixed before it. The first item is usually not the most visible one, but the one other fixes depend on, like clean data or a clear definition of a number.

Why does fixing everything at once end up fixing nothing?

A growing business collects problems faster than you can solve them. Your reports are late, hiring is slow, the website looks dated and customer data sits in three places. Each one is real and each one has a loud champion somewhere on your team.

When everything is urgent your effort spreads thin, so ten projects get a tenth of the attention each and none of them ever finishes. Your people get tired of starting things and you slowly lose faith that anything will change.

Prioritisation is the habit of choosing what to do first and, just as important, what not to do yet. In my opinion it's the work that makes all the other work count.

What is a simple scoring method you can use?

Start by listing every problem on one page. For each one you answer the three questions below in plain words and give a score from one to five, and I'd do it with your team rather than alone so that the loudest voice doesn't set the list.

• Cost of leaving it - score what it costs you each month in money, time or risk if you change nothing, where five is high.
• Effort is how much work, money and upheaval the fix takes. Five is easy and one is heavy, so a higher score is always better.
• Dependency asks whether something else needs fixing first. Five means this fix enables many others and one means it depends on them.
• Your score is the three numbers added together, and the highest total goes to the top of your list.

Here's a template you can copy, with examples that show the method rather than real data.

In this example the customer data problem comes first even though the website is the most visible, because fixing the data also makes the reports faster and the training simpler. That's what dependency does to a ranking, and it's why I always score it.

Treat your score as a conversation starter and not a verdict. If the result surprises you then ask why, because sometimes the surprise exposes an assumption you hadn't checked and sometimes the scores just need a nudge.

Which fixes have to come before the others?

Some fixes are foundations and you cannot build on them until they're done. Four come up again and again in growing businesses -

• A clear definition of the numbers, because if sales means one thing to the owner and another to the accountant then every report you see will start an argument.
• Clean, single-source data, where a customer exists once with one record that every team reads.
• A named owner for the process, because a fix with no owner slowly decays.
• Written steps for the work, since you can't improve, train or automate what isn't written down.

My advice is to draw the dependencies out on paper. Put each problem in a box and draw an arrow from the fix that must come first to the one that follows it. The boxes with many arrows leaving them are your starting points and the boxes with many arrows arriving can wait their turn.

I'm wary of a big technology project at the top of the list. A new system built on unclear definitions and messy data only automates the confusion, so fix the foundation first and your system choice gets far easier, including whether you need one at all.

How do you run the scoring session with your team?

Keep the session short and fair. Book one hour with the people who run the main parts of your business and put your list of problems on a wall or a shared screen. Ask each person to score alone on paper first and then compare, because scoring alone stops the most senior voice from setting every number.

Where your scores differ by two points or more, talk about it. The gap usually shows that two people have different facts or definitions, and I find those conversations are often more useful than the final ranking. Write down what was agreed and who owns the top items before anyone leaves the room.

There are two common errors to watch out for. Don't score the cost of leaving a problem by how annoying it is, and use money, time or risk instead, even as a rough estimate. And don't let effort mean only your own time, because you have to count the people doing the work and the time they need to learn a new way of working.

Keep your list visible to everyone after the session. Put it on a shared page and mark each item as next, later or not now. Say no to some items in plain words. A list that says what you will not do this quarter protects your team from being pulled in ten directions and gives you something to point at when a new request lands on your desk.

Add new problems as you spot them and score them the same way. A new problem that scores low waits its turn, and one that scores high may push something off the list, so make sure your team can see why.

What about problems you can't score because nobody knows the cost? Don't leave them out, and spend a few hours finding a rough figure because an unmeasured problem tends to sit on your list for years.

What are the cheap and unglamorous options you can try?

Many of your high-scoring fixes will cost very little. You can agree one definition and write it on a single page, name the owner of a task or retire a spreadsheet that duplicates another one. You can also add a checklist to a step where mistakes keep happening, or hold a short weekly meeting with a fixed agenda.

None of this looks like strategy and none of it needs a budget meeting, but if you ask me it often removes the problem or makes the bigger fix cheaper. Always list these next to your larger options so that the comparison is fair.

Then pick your top one or two items and give each one an owner and a date to review. Leave the rest of the list alone until those are done. Revisit your scores each quarter, because the cost of leaving a problem and the effort to fix it both change as your business changes.

If your list is long and the scores are close then an outside view can break the tie. That's the kind of decision support strategic advisory gives, in a short written recommendation and a plan. Hope this helps, and happy ranking!