The 2x2 matrix: how to be more systematic about the decisions you make
There are only two words that will always lead you to success. Those words are yes and no. Your days are filled with a constant stream of decisions. To be precise, according to the Columbia University study, at least 70 per day.
Theodore Roosevelt once said:
“In any moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing, the next best thing is the wrong thing, and the worst thing you can do is nothing“
It frightens me a lot that so many important decisions that I’ve made in my life were based on my intuition. Additionally, I loved to procrastinate, hundreds of times that I’ve waited for too long to make up my mind that led to wasted chances. And I’m not alone in those sins. I’ve been in meetings of really big companies, irrational decisions or no decisions are a common thing in those places. I could name a few reasons why it happens, but one of the most important — it’s so damn hard to rationalize stuff because we (humans) are irrational creatures.
What are we talking about when we say “Decision” anyway?
Meaning of decision in Latin is to cut away from the past.
- If I decide to become an entrepreneur I’m cutting away from having a nine-to-five job security
- If I decide to change my job I’m cutting away the current one
- If I decide that I want to get married I am cutting away from being single
I think you got the point.
2 x 2 Decision Matrix
The 2x2 Matrix is a decision support technique where plots options on a two-by-two matrix. Known also as a four blocker or magic quadrant.
The matrix diagram is a simple square divided into four equal quadrants. Each axis represents a decision criterion, such as cost or effort. Each axis is divided into two sections (for example low cost/high cost and easy/difficult). This makes it easy to visualize the options that are low cost and easy, and low cost and hard.
Eisenhower Matrix
General Eisenhower, he’s the guy that heads up the D-Day invasion. Also the president of the United States. He was faced with just constant decisions throughout his military career and also as his career as president. He had this saying
“We often confuse the urgent with the important, the important with the urgent”
He developed a decision-making matrix to help him prioritize what he should focus on. Essentially what he did, he layered two attributes importance & urgency against each other.
Importance on Y axis, urgency on X.
Plan
On the upper right corner, you’ve got important but not urgent tasks, those are the things that you need to schedule, get those on the calendar, to-do list, etc.
Eliminate
Bottom right corner, not urgent and not important. These things just don’t matter. You can just ignore them.
Delegate
Left bottom corner, things that need to happen but not important. E.g. you need to clean your office. This dust keeps growing in your workplace, and you need to clean it. But every time we clean the office we are not getting richer, or more successful, so you need to delegate those things to someone that could do this task, hire a cleaning company or someone that would do this job for you.
Do
Right top corner. Stuff that needs your attention right now. Those are things that you should work on. Important and urgent.
Building your matrix
You can build your matrix. It’s a very powerful tool during the brainstorms and meetings. When few people need to reach some agreement or decision. The matrix is drawn on a whiteboard, then the team plots the options along the axes.
Few tips:
- You need tension between attributes (e.g. cost and time, importance and urgency, etc.). People likely choose attributes that are too alike/similar. Those types of matrixes, that plots two alike attributes, won’t do the job. Popular 2x2 matrix categories include Cost and Value, Importance and Urgency (the Eisenhower Box), Time and Money, Effort and Impact.
- The best results happen when the team defines the boundary between the quadrants. For example, if the horizontal axis represents the time/urgency it would take to complete a task, the boundary line between the Urgent and Not urgent quadrants might be defined as 1 week, month etc. The same goes for other attributes, like cost, importance, etc.
Let me give you a couple of examples that I found interesting.
What user groups to research with first
Sometimes it’s very hard to define where we should start our research. this matrix is a great template to make the right decision. The vertical axis is the amount we expect to learn by visiting particular users. The horizontal axis is how easy or difficult it is to get to that user group.
So if we have the group of users that we can easily access (same city, or maybe it’s even our co-workers), and we will learn a lot from them — that’s the sweet point that we want to start. On the other hand, we could ignore those hard to reach and a little to learn from.
How to decide what to fix
After user research, usability evaluation, the team needs to prioritize the problems that go into the development pipeline.
The four quadrants are:
- Keep: These are low-frequency tasks that are easy to complete. We need to make sure that any changes we make don’t have a negative effect on these tasks.
- Promote: These are high-frequency tasks that are easy to complete: we should encourage marketing to make more of these when describing our product.
- Automate: These are low frequency, difficult tasks. We need to ask if there is a way to automate these tasks so that the system can do them on behalf of the user. If not, a Wizard design pattern might simplify the task for users.
- Re-design: These are high frequency, difficult tasks. Tasks in this quadrant are the ones we need to fix first.
Peter F. Drucker once said:
“Whenever you see a successful business, someone once made a courageous decision.”
On an important decision, you will rarely have 100% of the information needed for a good decision no matter how much you will research or wait. Definitely, if you wait too long, you have a different problem and start all over. It is often said that a wrong decision taken at the right time is better than the right decision taken at the wrong time.
