In a meeting with my former CEO at Fleishman-Hillard, Dave Senay, he told the group, in response to some heavy thinking, that “every consultant has to have a matrix”. Mine is still a work in progress (very nascent work in progress!) but this caught my eye, from Hutch Carpenter over on the Blogging Innovation blog:
As always with these matrices, you want to be high and to the right. My one gripe with this matrix is that it is too leading. There are clear benefits to being in each of the other three quadrants which, for this to have any merit, need to be articulated. We should not be scaring our clients or colleagues into making the wrong decision by with-holding or diluting the data needed to make those decisions.
These benefits are clearly laid out in the post (link below) but for those of us who just like to look at pretty pictures…
Good luck with your matrix Ed!
Something that I’ve had to learn the hard way is that while I usually want to be high and to the right, as you’ve noted, there are benefits to the other quadrants. And often, those benefits outweigh the risks of the top right. Risk it when you have nothing to lose. Otherwise, it might not be a bad idea to aim for another quadrant.