Book of the Week: The Power of the 2x2 Matrix

I enjoyed being reminded of the 2x2 analysis method in the book The Power of the 2 x 2 Matrix: Using 2 x 2 Thinking to Solve Business Problems and Make Better Decisions  this week. Probably the most famous 2x2 maxtrix from the past 20 years was from Stephen R. Covey’s The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People  that used importance and urgency to help us analyze our activities in those dimensions. It turns out that the seemingly simple 2x2 is great for analyzing all kinds of things….and that it isn’t necessarily always simple.

The book provides details of a reliable path of pre-work prior to actually using the tool which is good basic problem solving 101:

• Name the problem
• Describe the ideal end state
• Brainstorm the list of what is important…difficult…required
• Cluster the list
• Rank the clusters
• Look at the top 2 or 3 and pick 2 to try for the 2x2 matrix

Once you have designed a 2x2, you can understand pretty quickly if it works to provide perspective and insight to the problem.

So – this is a good book to encourage you to use a pretty intuitive tool once you learn how to perform the pre-work to hone its formulation. This book can help you do that!