Every planning meeting ends with a list longer than the team can handle. Choosing is the hard part, and the choice usually comes from whoever argues best or from whichever problem was most annoying that week.
A safer way is to separate fact from hypothesis first, and only then put things in order.
Fact, hypothesis and gap
- A fact has a record: the number in the system, the spreadsheet, the recorded call, the written complaint.
- A hypothesis is a plausible explanation that hasn’t been tested yet, such as “our price is too high” or “the ads attract the wrong people”.
- A gap is something nobody knows, such as “we have no way to tell where our best customers come from”.
A gap is information too. It shows where the company decides in the dark.
Sometimes the first priority is to turn the light on there.
An order that works
- Risks that could stop the business. Cash, legal obligations and critical dependencies come before any growth plan.
- Blockers of the goal. Whatever keeps the target from happening, even if everything else works.
- Opportunities sized to the evidence. The more facts behind them, the bigger the bet worth making.
- With weak evidence, investigate. When all you have is a hypothesis, the priority is to confirm it with a small test before a big change.
An example
A company wants to sell more. It knows that many leads come in and few turn into quotes, because that is in the records. It suspects the price drives customers away. And it doesn’t know how long it takes to answer a quote request.
Cutting the price would mean acting on the hypothesis. The order above points elsewhere: measure the response time, which closes the gap; fix the follow-up on quotes, which acts on the fact; and then test the price with a small group of customers, which puts the hypothesis to the test.
Three priorities are enough
A list of thirty recommendations helps nobody decide. That is why the free diagnosis report brings up to three priorities, and each one says what is already confirmed and what still needs to be looked into.
