| - | Column A – Distasteful Working Conditions | Column B - Distasteful Working Conditions Ranked | Column C + The Keys to My Effectiveness at Work |
|---|---|---|---|
| Places I Have Worked Thus Far in My Life | I Have Learned from the Past That My Effectiveness at Work Is Decreased When I Have to Work Under These Conditions | Among the Factors or Qualities Listed in Column A, These Are the Ones I Dislike Absolutely the Most (in Order of Decreasing Dislike) | The Opposite of These Qualities, in Order: I Believe My Effectiveness Would Be at an Absolute Maximum, If I Could Work Under These Conditions |
Plants that grow beautifully at sea level, often perish if they’re taken ten thousand feet up the mountain. Likewise, we do our best work under certain conditions, but not under others. Thus, the question: “What are your favorite working conditions?” actually is a question about “Under what circumstances do you do your most effective work?”
The best way to approach this is by starting with the things you
If you are baffled as to how to prioritize your list in Column A, I recommend you use a little invention of mine called the Prioritizing Grid. It’s on this page. Rather than trying to guess about ten or more items all at once, it asks you to compare just two items at a time.
Instructions:
1. In Section A write down ten factors you are trying to prioritize, in any random order you choose.
2. Then in Section B, start to compare just two items; in the little box to the left of factor 1 and factor 2, you will see the numbers 1 and 2. The question you would frame for yourself, here, would be as follows: “If I were offered two jobs, and in the first job offer I would be rid of my first distasteful working condition (1) but not the second (2), while in the second job offer I would be rid of my second distasteful working condition (2), but not the first (1), which job offer would I take?
3. Then in that little box you circle either 1 or 2, depending on which distasteful working condition you are
4. Now you work your way down the boxes nearest Section A, which as you can see lie in a diagonal running from northwest to southeast. So the next little box has 2 and 3 in it. Same question, except now you have to determine which working condition you hate the worst, between those two (2) or (3). Circle the appropriate number.
5. When you’ve reached the little box at the bottom of that first diagonal (containing the little numbers 9 and 10), go back up to the top and work down the next diagonal (first the little box containing 1 and 3; then the little box containing 2 and 4; then the one containing 3 and 5, etc.
6. When you’ve reached the box at the bottom of
7. Back up to the top to the next diagonal (to the left of those you’ve already used), namely, the box containing 1 and 5, then the box containing 2 and 6, and so on.
8. Keep this up until you’ve used every little box (the final one being 1 and 10).
9. Now you turn to Section C, at the bottom of the grid. First row is the numbers of the items you randomly listed in Section A, at the beginning. Second row is how many times each got circled. So, you count how many times the number 1 got circled in all of Section B. Let’s say item 1 got circled 3 times. In the second row at the bottom, right below the number 1, you put 3. Next, count how many times item 2 got circled; let’s say it was five times, so you put the number 5 right below 2. And so on, up to item 10.
10. Look at the counts in the second row. Let’s suppose you have two items that each got circled 5 times. How do you resolve the tie? Well, let’s suppose they were item #2 and item #7. You look back at Section B, to find the little box that had 2 and 7 in it. See which one you circled; let’s say it was 2. Then give 2 an extra half point. Now its “count” is 5?.
11. Let’s say you have a three-way tie in your “times circled” line. That means you contradicted yourself somewhere in Section B. For example, you said 1 was more important to you than 2, and 2 was more important to you than 3. So far so good; but then, you contradicted yourself. You said 3 was more important than 1. That can’t be. Figure out some way to resolve it, even by comparing those three items to each other, and assigning an extra three-quarters point to the distasteful working condition you hated the most, an extra one-half point to the condition you hated the next most, and leave the count for the third one as it is. Now, no two factors or items have the same count.
12. Now down on the bottom line in Section C, rank the items, according to their count. The one that got circled the most, let’s say it was item 2, gets a final rank of #1. Write that down beneath item number 2 in the third row. Let’s say item 5 got the next most circles or points on line 2; write down a 2 beneath the 5. Let’s say item 10 got the next most circles; write the number 3 on the final rank line. And so forth.
13. Finally, recopy your list in Section D—now in the exact order the grid ranked them. In terms of our examples above, copy item 2 in Section A onto line 1 in Section D. Copy item 5 onto line 2 in Section D, etc., until you’ve copied all ten factors or items, in exactly the order of priority for you.
14. What have you ended up with, in Section D? The exact list you copy into Column B of your Distasteful Working Conditions chart.
Now that you have that list in Column B, ranked in terms of most distasteful down to least distasteful working conditions, turn to Column C in that chart and write
Copy the top 5 items in Column C, onto the Working Conditions petal of your Flower Diagram.
Copyright © 1989 Richard N. Bolles. All rights reserved.
