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Overview Part 5 of 7
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OBJECTIVE WEIGHTINGS

OBJECTIVE

EXAMPLE:

Issue: Which Service Departments should expand? Objective: Ideal, Current, Optimistic, Pessimistic. Decider: Chair
OBJECTIVE	PRIORITY%
Ideally	5
Currently	46
Optimistically	5
Pessimistically	44
ALL OBJECTIVE	100

Deciders may wish to approach decision-making more thoroughly , with some consideration/discussion of the pros and cons of each option. They may wish to consider several factors, objectives, or objective of comparison, and unpack the general objective “All Things Considered”.

An objective answers the question: why are some options more important than others? Unless the objective are reasonably clear, we are likely to be like Alice in the Looking Glass to find our heads “ filled with ideas without knowing exactly what they are” or whether they are relevant to anything.

Objective embody the individual’s, the team’s, the organisation’s experience and wisdom. Unless they are specific, objective become a mercenary army that can be turned against anyone. If too generalized, anyone can dip into them to justify any arbitrary decision.

Some useful questions are:

What are we trying to achieve?
Which objective or objectives do /should guide our decisions & actions?
What objective should guide our priority choices?
What assumptions are we making?
What preconditions apply?
What general arguments are relevant?

Depending on the issue, objective may be:

objectives	factors
reasons	pros & cons
assumptions	attributes
directions	approaches
values	guidelines
viewpoints	benefits & losses

Contextual objective (eg. survival) provide relevant terms of reference which precondition or legitimated any decision. Contributive objective (eg. moral) provide arguments or reasons why a particular decision might in principle be justified. Constitutive objective include ego objective (eg. pleasure), peer objective (eg. belongingness), ethical objective (eg. professional norms), humanity objective (eg. consumer rights). Conditional objective (eg. financial limits, environmental factors) provide indications of the circumstances or constraints within which a decision appropriately applies.

Some meta-objective are always implicitly or explicitly relevant over either the short or long term:
What’s best (ie. desirability or optimality)
What’s practicable (ie. achievability, feasibility, probability)
What’s popular (ie. acceptability to interested parties)
What could be best (ie. potentiality)

Some common objectives used in successful business include:

effectiveness/profitability	strategic orientation
productivity/efficiency	knowledge utilization
consumer satisfaction	company autonomy
stakeholder satisfaction	proactive orientation
environmental sustainability	ethical adequacy

Some tests of adequate objectives are:
Can you decide relative weightings between them?
Does it make sense to say that any one objective is more important than others for some relevant reason?
Only 1-10 objective are allowed in any one run of Priorities Now. (Many people find 3 – 5 objective the most convenient).
Objective may be entered and prioritized at any point after the Issue is entered – after or before Options or Deciders.

OBJECTIVE WEIGHTINGS

The individual and/or team weight the objective by either Intuition or Judgement method the same way they decided option priorities (as described above).

The decider/s objective weightings are his/her proposed strategy or policy in specific terms. The team’s objective weightings are the team strategy or policy.

DECISIONS

Each decider applies his/her objective to the options. He/she runs through each objective in turn to produce an overall weighting of options-with-objective. These are the priorities of all the options in the light of each weighted objective in turn.

The focal questions are:
What are our policy-related priorities?
Do our policy and strategy align?
How do our objective apply to the options?
What are the implications of our objectives for this issue/
What strategies are implied by our option priorities?

The final decision is given by the overall weighting of all the options on all the weighted objective by all the relevant deciders to the extent of their influence. The covers:
Individual and team priorities
Individual and team objective weights
Individual and team option priorities on a objective-by-objective basis.

All this is far too much for any decider to hold in mind all at once, still less for a team of deciders. However it is quick and easy and smooth to carry through with Priorities Now.

Issue: Which Service Departments should expand?
Objective : Ideally, in-fact, optimistically, pessimistically Method : Judgement Analysis Deciders: Team (Ch, MD, FD, NED) Standard: Satisfactiorily Consistent
OBJECTIVE	Ideally (10%)	In-fact (34%)	Optim (33%)	Pessim (23%)	OVERALL (100%)
OPTIONS
MS Accounts Personnel R & D Admin	53 13 23 8 3	24 24 30 9 13	27 20 21 31 1	10 53 12 11 14	32 24 23 14 7
ALL OPTIONS	100	100	100	100	100

Overview Part 5 of 7
1 2 3 4 5 6 7