How The Impact/Ease Grid Will Multiply Your Profits

When you’re running a business, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed. It happens to every business owner sometimes — but it shouldn’t be like that all the time. If you find yourself frequently having a hard time keeping up with your business, even with increased help, you might be failing to prioritise well.
Prioritising is a vital part of running a business. Put simply, prioritization is listing items (be they tasks, projects, or goals) in order of importance. It sounds easy enough, but the challenge is implementing it into an effective plan that will increase profits.
An Impact/Ease Grid can help you determine the best way to prioritise (in some cases, it might even suggest that a task isn’t necessary) for your business.
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Achieving more with less

The Impact/Ease Grid is based on the 80/20 Principle of getting the most from the least, also known as the Pareto Principle. Coined by entrepreneur and author Richard Koch in the ‘90s, the principle is based on the 1906 observation by economist Vilfredo Pareto that 80% of Italy’s wealth was controlled by 20% of its people.

This observation is not only still relevant, it’s been found that in virtually every area of society and nature, there are imbalances, and very often only 20% of cause leads to 80% of effect. For example, according to Personal Excellence:

• 80% of the population of England comes from 20% of its cities
• 70-85% of the world’s resources are consumed by 20% of the world’s countries
• 80% of crime is committed by 20% of criminals
• 80% of rain comes from 20% of clouds

In business, according to Simplicable, common imbalances include:

• 80% of sales come from 20% of clients
• 80% of the work is done by 20% of employees
• 80% of sales are of 20% of the product line
• 80% of complaints come from 20% of customers

The 80/20 Principle applies this idea to your to-do list and helps you figure out which small percentage of focus of it will make the most impact.

Creating an Impact/Ease Grid

There are a couple of ways you can create your own custom Impact/Ease Grid for your business. One is by downloading an Impact/Ease worksheet and graph with instructions, which is free and manual. Another is to purchase an Impact/Ease tool such as PrioritEase, which simplifies the process by taking information you input and rank, and graphing it for you.
As complicated as the Impact/Ease Grid might sound if you’ve never used one before, it’s actually very simple to create one. Try making one yourself for free before deciding whether you want to purchase a tool.
To create your own Impact/Ease Grid:

1. Make a list of things you need to do (focus areas). For your first grid, choose a smaller project rather than your entire business.
2. Determine the single most impactful item on the list, and put a ‘10’ beside it. A high impact item is one that will result in a high pay-off. Now determine the single least impactful item and put a ‘1’ beside it.
3. Using the ‘10’ and ‘1’ as a guide from highest to lowest impact, assign each of the remaining items a number (note that you do not need to create a ranking from 1-10; you may wind up with several 3s, multiple 8s, and no 6s, for example). These are the Impact numbers.
4. Next to the Impact scores, repeat the numbering process, only this time the easiest item is a 10 and the most difficult is a 1. A high ease item requires a low amount of effort, money, and/or time.
5. Use the downloaded graph (recommended — it’s free), or make a line-type graph with 0 at the bottom left corner. Add the numbers 1-10 going up the vertical axis on the left and across the horizontal axis at the bottom; Impact goes vertically, Ease goes horizontally. Draw lines to split your graph in half horizontally and vertically at the 5 marks to make four smaller squares; these will be your impact/ease quadrants.
6. Enter each item on the chart according to their Impact and Ease numbers.

Once your items are plotted, each will fall into one of the four quadrants:

• First Priorities (upper right): These items, which are both high in impact and relatively easy, are quick wins. Start them immediately.

• Strategise (upper left): These are high-impact items that have a higher level of difficulty. Come up with a strategy to get these done, preferably by finding a way to make the task easier.
• Delegate (lower right): These are lower-impact items that are relatively easy. Assign them to someone else, or use non-priority time to complete them.
• Dump (lower left): These are items with both low impact and low ease. Determine whether you can remove them from the to-do list altogether.

Creating a Grid with PrioritEase

As simple as it is to create an Impact/Ease Grid manually, there are reasons why you might prefer to use a tool, such as:

• It can save you valuable time
• You can use the tool to create quick grids for as many projects as you have
• You can track your progress
• The margin of error is lower
• Graphs can be saved to your computer/device automatically

You can try PrioritEase for free, however the PDF, Save, and Load functions are premium.
Creating a grid with PrioritEase is similar to doing it manually:

• Add 5-15 items (the full version has a voting tool to narrow the list down if you have more than 15 items)
• Sort the items by impact by dragging and dropping so that the most important is on top and the least important is on the bottom
• Sort again according to ease
• Click ‘Graph’ to see the results

The tool is definitely quicker and easier, and the premium features add value. Still, you can achieve a more nuanced grid manually, since you can assign the numbers 1-9 more than once (or not at all).

The free demo of PrioritEase is serviceable for small projects with a small number of items, where you just want to identify your starting point and potential dump items quickly.

Applying the results to the 80/20 Principle

Your Impact/Ease Grid identifies those tasks that will deliver more for less — your own 20%, if you will. You might think you know what those areas are, but actually graphing it makes a big difference. You might find that something you considered to be a high-medium priority (but not a must-do-now) is the only item to fall in the First Priority area of the box. Instead of getting it done now, you may have been focusing on a more difficult task first, effectively costing you the results of the easier task in the meantime.

Starting with high impact, relatively easy tasks can also stave off procrastination. You get it done, and the ball is rolling to move you on to more difficult high-impact tasks.
The Graph can also be the push you need to ditch ideas that are likely to deliver less for more.
For example, let’s say you’re sorting out your web and social media goals. Your site could use some tweaks, but you’d really love a major redesign, among other things. You also need to set up a twitter and connect it to your Facebook, but that’s not as major as the redesign.

Your Impact/Ease Grid might tell you that those “little” social media tasks should be the top priority, followed by adding plugins to your site. And those little things can bring results while you plan the redesign.
It might seem unlikely that taking 10-15 minutes to create a simple graph can increase your profits, and even more unlikely that simplifying is the key. But it works. Give it a try!
Do you utilise the 80/20 Principle? Follow another business principle that works? Share your experience in the comments!
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