Timing: 1 hour

Ingredients:
• Internet access
• A goal

Players (5..8 recommended):
• Business Manager / Business Owner
• Employees / Team members

Directions:
This version of the famous impact-effort technique has been popularized by XPLANE. Aiming to find the most efficient strategy to reach your goal, Impact & Effort Matrix maps possible actions against two factors: the potential impact and the effort required to implement. By organizing your ideas, you can see which ones will lead to the greatest payoffs and lowest costs before you get stuck on a twisted road of wasted time.

Clicking on this image will bring you to an “instant game” at innovationgames.com, where you can play Impact & Effort Matrix online. The same image will be used as the matrix, which has a different impact-effort combination in each quadrant.

• High Impact, Low Effort: The best ideas go here!
• High Impact, High Effort: Further study is likely required.
• Low Impact, High Effort: Probably best to avoid these.
• Low Impact, Low Effort: Further study is likely required.

The light bulbs you will see at the upper left corner of the chart represent ideas. Simply add an idea to the chart by dragging a light bulb to its corresponding quadrant and describing what it is.

All moves can be seen in real time by each participant, so everyone can collaborate to edit the descriptions and positions of the strategies. Communicate using the integrated chat facility to work together and form useful ideas.

Key Points:
This technique is a necessary first step in reaching your goal; while it is great to know where you are going, it is also critical to understand how to get there. The spatial organization and group collaboration involved in the game helps identify how to optimize the benefits and minimize the costs of reaching your goal. Play Impact & Effort Matrix to map the most effective way to arrive at your objective.