Got so many ideas or problems within your department? Having troubles with prioritizing?
What idea goes first and what comes next? Have no idea what problem/s affects your department's the most?
The INTERRELATIONSHIP DIAGRAPH is the best tool to help you with that!
WHAT IS AN INTERRELATIONSHIIP DIAGRAPH?
Interrelationship Diagraph is a tool that shows cause and effect relationship of issues/idea groups. It is helpful to determine drivers, to prioritize putting more efforts on
The arrows show direct relationship and distinguish causes from effects.
HOW IT WORKS
- Lay down issues/idea groups in circular/radial arrangement.
- Connect the issues. Choose any item to start with and compare it to any other. Decide if the two are related to each other in any way. If they are. identify which is a cause and which is an effect. Use ang arrow pointing from cause to effect to show the relationship
- Analyze. Any item with a large number of outgoing arrows is a key driver/cause of the problem. Any item with many arrows pointing to it is a main outcome/effect/recipient group
THIS IS AN EXAMPLE OF AN INTERRELATIONSHIP DIAGRAPH
(please click the image to for a more clearer resolution)
In the image above, you can see 14 boxes. The 14 boxes are labeled with 14 unique ideas that would help improve the training department which is drawn out from surveys and brainstorming sessions. The arrows that come out from every box depicts that the certain idea drives or influence the other ideas. This means that the more arrows come out from a certain box or idea, the more influential that idea is. Hence, you must prioritize that specific idea and put actions to it right away.
Keep on comparing different ideas and discuss it with your team as well (TEAMWORK IS IMPORTANT!)
Once the team is already satisfied with the results of the comparison, have it summarized by sorting the ideas with the highest number of outgoing arrows (drivers) to the lowest
In this case, results showed that the training department must prioritize in giving specific objectives, training for officers, duration extension, clearer documented processes and giving practical activities to make improvements in the department's performance.
But what about the arrows that are going inwards?
Ideas or problems that receives high amount of arrows is given the lowest priority since these ideas or problems can be carried out once the top priorities (ideas or problems) are executed well or is put into action. For example, if practical activities are done every now and then within the training, we can expect a strong engagement and more employees are motivated to join the training. Another example, training for training officers makes them more competent. Thus, we can expect a solid knowledge transfer from the training content & facilitator to the employees.
You will no longer have to worry about the engagement issue or knowledge transfer issue as long as you have practical activities and training for training officers that will make them more competent and effective.