Disagreement about priorities is usually not an argument about figures, but a difference in the picture of what is happening outside and which of that weighs heaviest. That difference can be measured by having each board member score separately on the same five axes and placing the outcomes side by side: where the points lie close together there is agreement, where they diverge is where the discussion lies.
In a meeting everyone talks about "the market" or "the customer", but each board member fills in that word differently. The commercial director thinks of revenue pressure from three large customers, the operations director thinks of staff shortages, the financial director thinks of margins. Without a shared reference point, the conversation appears to be about priorities, but in reality it concerns five different problem definitions running through one another. A board of a logistics company with 180 employees can thus remain stuck for three meetings on the question of whether automation or staff retention should take priority, while both points actually do not compete with each other but lie on a different axis of the problem.
By having each board member score independently, without first consulting each other, a spread emerges that shows whether the difference of opinion is factual or interpretive. A large spread on one axis means the board does not agree on what is going on; a small spread with nevertheless a difference in priority means people agree on the facts but weigh them differently. That distinction is the starting point for a different conversation. At a technical company with 90 employees, the spread on the "competitive pressure" axis turned out to be small, but on "regulatory pressure" it was large: two board members had seen recent legislation, two others had not. Not a difference of opinion, therefore, but a difference in information, something that can be closed with a horizon scan you carry out yourself before continuing the discussion about priorities.
If the spread is small and the discussion nevertheless continues, it is no longer about what is happening, but about what is most important for this company. That is a different discussion, with different arguments: risk appetite, time horizon, who bears which risk. In that case it is not useful to order another analysis, because an analysis resolves a factual difference and not a values difference. A board of a care organization with 250 employees noticed this when most of the discussion concerned the "staff scarcity" axis: everyone saw the same problem, but one wanted to invest in automation and the other in training. That conversation is settled with a decision, not with more research.
Sometimes the spread within the board is large simply because there is no shared external picture to measure against. Everyone then reasons from their own department, without a common starting point regarding trends, regulation or competitive movements. In that case it helps to first establish how you test whether the strategy still holds, before continuing the discussion about priorities: a priority based on an outdated picture of the market is by definition a gamble. Companies that skip this often keep meeting about the same points because nobody puts the underlying picture up for discussion.
Part of the disagreement stems from assumptions that were once justified and have never been tested again: "our customers choose on price", "this supplier remains stable", "this segment keeps growing". If one board member still holds such an assumption to be true and another does not, a difference arises that appears on the surface to be about priorities but is at its core about an assumption that no longer holds. It is then useful to look at what a strategic assumption exactly is and how you check whether it still holds, before discussing the priority itself any further.
If the same discussion keeps coming back without a decision, that is a sign that there is not yet a shared picture to fall back on. An indication of how large the spread within a team is can be obtained quickly with a free mini-test of ten questions, which yields an initial pressure profile without requiring a session or conversation for it. Anyone who runs into this kind of disagreement more often can also check how often a strategy actually needs to be recalibrated, so that the conversation about priorities does not start over from scratch each time.
Anyone who is clear on where the spread lies and why faces the next question: what does an adjusted theme mean in practice, in tasks, hours and systems. At that point the work scan on ftetoai.com comes into view, which shows what a decision about priorities concretely means for who in the company will do what.
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