The criteria
Alongside the goals, leadership decides what should weigh heavily. The decision criteria, that is your own requirements for what makes an initiative compelling, and the feasibility criteria, what determines whether it can actually be done.
The review shines a light on the criteria themselves, not just the initiatives. Sometimes the most useful discovery is that a criterion you thought was decisive doesn't separate anything at all.
Two things are deliberate here. The first is the order. The criteria are set before the initiatives are known. It's uncomfortable, because it's easier to weigh in on concrete proposals than on abstract principles. But that's exactly why it has to be done this way. Criteria formulated after seeing the initiatives get imperceptibly shaped to favour the ones you already like.
The second is how the criteria are counted. Each criterion gets a weight, and the score on an axis is a weighted sum of the answers. Decision criteria and feasibility are kept on separate axes and never mixed. An initiative can be highly compelling and hard to deliver at the same time, and that tension should show, not be smoothed away.
One thing you notice quickly when the criteria are tested. A criterion where all initiatives get roughly the same answer adds nothing. It feels important, but it doesn't separate the wheat from the chaff. The review shines a light on the criteria themselves, not just the initiatives, and sometimes the most useful discovery is that a criterion you thought was decisive doesn't in practice separate anything at all.
Want to see it in practice?
The review is done with your own portfolio. Try the platform with your own test data or our demo data, or book a call and we'll show what a setup looks like for you.