Sometimes, even when you have clearly thought out your priorities, there are multiple goals that you want to accomplish. These conflicts in your projects or goals can be hard to mitigate. Hopefully this method will help.

Read all the way to the bottom for a FREE resource!

I’ve used this tool in business as it is very helpful when comparing projects to each other. Especially in business, I have found that multiple people involved and different priorities can make judging which projects to take on can get complicated. Quantifying the projects and seeing them all visually in the same plane helps resolve the conflicts, whether internal to you or externally with other people.

The PICK Chart does just that. It will help you put multiple projects or goals in comparison to each other where you can easily decide which ones get your priorities. The PICK chart was created by Lockheed Martin for Lean Six Sigma projects. Lean Six Sigma, to explain it ultra-simply, is the methodology used to improve performance through processes improvement. You need tools to prioritize when you are looking at multiple projects to improve your business. The PICK chart shows multiple projects in relation to each other in terms of their impact to your organization and ease/difficulty of implementation.

For your personal life, a simple PICK chart can help you determine what goals you should attack first. The idea is that if you can only focus on one goal, which one will have the best one to start with. PICK stands for Possible, Implement, Challenge, and Kill. Here is how each is determined:

  • Possible: Low Impact, Low Effort
  • Implement: High Impact, Low Effort
  • Challenge: High Impact, High Effort
  • Kill: Low Impact, High Effort

The easiest way to use a PICK Chart is to put Impact on the X-axis and Difficulty on the Y-axis. Next, determine where each of your goals fit on the graph.

PICK Chart

 

You can start with an excel-style table for more complicated or in-depth analysis. List your goals in one column, Impact and Difficulty in the next two columns. On each Line, list your goals and put a value for each Impact and Difficulty. Define your ranges, such as 1-3 or 1-5, for the values. Next, graph the coordinate for each goal in an graph. Finally, draw horizontal and vertical lines to split the chart into the four quadrants. Find your highest impact with lowest difficulty and start with that goal. We could go into more detail or work through more steps, but this will get you started.

Example PICK Chart

Example PICK Chart

 

Get a free PICK Chart template!

Would you like a free PICK chart template? Send me an email to phil@philklutts.com. Put “PICK Chart” in the subject line and I’ll send you a free template with simple instructions to use.

 

Posted in Goals, Productivity and tagged ,

Leave a Comment