You have ten $1 bills (or whatever play money Craig uses down-under).
I need you to rank each of those ten bills in priority from lowest to highest, based on which of the $1 bills has the most value. How would you do this?
personally, i would assign them a priority based on random chance, knock off early and spend the rest of the afternoon drinking beer with craig. when people complain about how i valued them, i'd ask them to figure out a way to do it better and spend that afternoon drinking more beer while the other person bashes their head into a wall at the futility of the task. but that's just me...
i tend to get frustrated when i'm told to do a task that, when you don't think about the task critically, sounds simple but is really absurd. this post was in response to a frustrating situation i was dealing with where i was asked to essentially do the above, but in a business context. when you've got a diverse set of stakeholders, all with vastly different goals and preferred methods of success, and you're given a list of items which are all important, how do you end up ranking those in a way that is 1) meaningful and 2) doesn't alienate everyone who cares.
all that said, i assigned a silly task, but one meant to point out that some serious tasks are still just that silly. :)
This is beautiful. My manager once gave me about 5 'very important' things to do. So I asked her "what's the most important". Her answer; "They're all important". "Yeah I know, but which is top priority?".
personally, i would assign them a priority based on random chance, knock off early and spend the rest of the afternoon drinking beer with craig. when people complain about how i valued them, i'd ask them to figure out a way to do it better and spend that afternoon drinking more beer while the other person bashes their head into a wall at the futility of the task. but that's just me...
ReplyDeletePerhaps the older ones would be more valuable? I'd rank them by series and then by condition. *shrug
ReplyDeleteI would rank them from new to old - if we are prioritizing then shouldn't the best be at the top? Any doesn't everyone like a crisp dollar bill?
ReplyDeleteValue to whom? Are we to assume that we know the value system of our customers?
ReplyDeleteExample if our customer is a rare bill collector the value system is different than an ATM services that refills the machine.
exactly. my. point.
Deletei tend to get frustrated when i'm told to do a task that, when you don't think about the task critically, sounds simple but is really absurd. this post was in response to a frustrating situation i was dealing with where i was asked to essentially do the above, but in a business context. when you've got a diverse set of stakeholders, all with vastly different goals and preferred methods of success, and you're given a list of items which are all important, how do you end up ranking those in a way that is 1) meaningful and 2) doesn't alienate everyone who cares.
all that said, i assigned a silly task, but one meant to point out that some serious tasks are still just that silly. :)
This is beautiful. My manager once gave me about 5 'very important' things to do. So I asked her "what's the most important". Her answer; "They're all important". "Yeah I know, but which is top priority?".
ReplyDeleteYou guessed it: "They're all top priority".
*sigh*