What's in this template
One ranking question with five example initiatives. Replace them with your candidates — ranking is what makes the answer usable for a budget conversation.
Why ranking is the right shape for budget
Budget is inherently a trade-off
Asking whether an initiative is important gets a yes every time. Asking people to rank it against four others gets you the answer you actually need.
It surfaces what people would give up
The item that consistently lands last is more informative than the one that wins. That's the conversation most budget meetings never manage to have.
Anonymity changes the answer
People don't rank their own department last in a meeting. They will in an anonymous poll, and that's when you learn something.
The rounds make it defensible
Showing the elimination sequence to a board or leadership team is considerably stronger than reporting a consensus that emerged in discussion.
Run it in three steps
List the initiatives
Five to eight. Describe outcomes rather than line items, so people rank the goal instead of the accounting category.
Send before the meeting
People rank more honestly at their desk than in a room with the budget owner present.
Open with the ranking
Start the meeting with the result on screen. Discussion then focuses on the contested middle rather than everything at once.
The data behind ranked choice
We simulated 660,000 group votes to measure how often single-choice voting picks a different winner. With five options the plurality winner held no outright majority 84.3% of the time, and the two methods disagreed in 28.7% of votes. The gap widens as options increase.
Read the full study → · methodology and code published.