MOVING TO AN EFFECTIVE ORGANIZATIONAL PRIORITY SYSTEM

How can the implementation gap be narrowed so that understanding and consensus of organizational strategies run through all levels of management? How can power politics be minimized? Can a process be developed in which projects are consistently prioritized to support organizational strategies? Can the prioritized projects be used to allocate scarce organizational resources-for example, people, equipment? Can the process encourage bottom-up initiation of projects that support clear organizational targets?

What is needed is a set of integrative criteria and a process for evaluating and selecting projects that support higher-level strategies and objectives. A single-project priority system that ranks projects by their contribution to the strategic plan would make life easier. Easier said than done.

There are always more project proposals than available resources permit. Therefore, some centralized process is needed to allocate the scarce resources of the organization to those projects that contribute more value than other alternative projects. Survival of the organization depends on a process that accomplishes this successfully. Selection of any project among alternative projects implies a decision model related to specific criteria.

The key is having criteria that support the strategic direction of the organization and that are recognized and used by every member of the organization. Experts are convinced a major key to success of projects is careful development of project selection priority criteria. At a minimum, carefully selected criteria will facilitate the following:

1. Keeping organization stakeholders focused on the strategic bull's-eye of the organization.



2. Consensus as to which projects are highest priority.



3. Use of organization resources more effectively and resource planning.



4. Portfolio selection of projects that balance risk, given available capital.



5. Openness in the project selection process.



6. A mechanism for controlled change through criteria selection.

The absence of such project selection criteria leads to confusion, power politics, and poor or misuse of an organization's resources.