Select Annual Priorities

What this session can decide

Propose priority candidates and their reasons. Authorised people separately finalise budgets, staffing, and final selection.

Outside its scope

• Do not make this a rubber-stamp meeting for policy already decided.
• Do not finalise budget allocations.
• Do not use this for departmental performance appraisal.

Primary caution: Do not make this a rubber-stamp meeting for policy already decided.

Before starting

Question and scope

Choose 3–5 annual priorities from the organisation's purpose and make explicit what will not be selected. Before starting, state the subject and period covered in one sentence.

What this session decides

Propose priority candidates and their reasons. Authorised people separately finalise budgets, staffing, and final selection.

Output recipient

The Recorder keeps the final annual-priority candidate table and shows leading candidates, ties, unresolved items, and exclusions to the decision-maker.

Participation and information boundaries

Explain the choices to pass, take a break, or leave. Keep personal information, confidential information, and attribute-based evaluation off the record surface. Assign Participant support separately.

Operating roles

Assign Lead facilitator, Recorder, Timekeeper, and Participant support before starting, and confirm who announces switching and stopping.

Next review

Decide a review date, permitted viewers, and the person responsible for the next decision on the annual-priority candidate table.

Who takes responsibility

Lead facilitator

Protect the purpose and exclusions of Select Annual Priorities and announce the start and end of each stage.

From before the start through the end

Recorder

Record the purpose sentence, purpose/principles/practice structure, and annual-priority candidate table at each stage, then hand them to their recipients at the end.

From preparing record surfaces before the start through storage after the end

Timekeeper

Notify the Lead facilitator 3 minutes before each stage ends and when switching to breaks or buffer time.

At the start of every stage and 3 minutes before its end

Participant support

Receive requests to pass, take a break, leave, or check individually, and decide with the Lead facilitator whether resumption is possible.

From before the start through the end

Session flow

Minutes are measured from the session start. Method time, transition time, breaks and buffer are shown separately; they are not additional overlapping activities.

1. 0–23 minutes

   Explore the purpose of prioritising

   Method: Nine Whys · 0–20 minutes. Transition: 20–23 minutes (3 minutes).

   Ask what the organisation wants to achieve this year and progressively check why it matters. If abstract terms continue, rephrase them as observable change and combine them into one sentence.

   Responsible: Lead facilitator; Recorder; Participant support

   Output: Purpose sentence

   Handoff: Display the purpose sentence in the centre of the policy-design work.

   This stage may be shortened only in accordance with the stated conditions.

2. 23–146 minutes

   Design principles and practices from purpose

   Method: Purpose to Practice · 23–143 minutes. Transition: 143–146 minutes (3 minutes).

   Design five elements in order: purpose, principles, participants, session rules/roles/time allocation, and practices. Check contradictions between elements and turn them into practices observable within the year.

   Responsible: Lead facilitator; Recorder; Participant support

   Output: Purpose/principles/practice structure

   Handoff: Put practice candidates on separate cards, one per item, and give them to the person handling ranking.

   This stage is not marked as shortenable.

3. 156–179 minutes

   Rank priority candidates

   Method: Ranking · 156–176 minutes. Transition: 176–179 minutes (3 minutes).

   Put candidates on equally sized cards and order them by one criterion: alignment with purpose. Check only disputed positions; if candidates remain unagreed after two moves, leave them tied or unresolved.

   Responsible: Lead facilitator; Recorder; Participant support

   Output: Annual-priority candidate table

   Handoff: Give the priority-candidate table and reasons for unresolved items to the annual-plan decision-maker.

   This stage is not marked as shortenable.

What is retained and who receives it

Materials and setup

Material names, quantities, groups and handling instructions retain the fixed draft's original helper-derived guidance. Where a format is marked “Source material specification”, the entire bound English source material entry takes precedence over the old helper-derived format guidance. This format-only correction does not resolve other instruction or safety concerns. English names are not substituted into a Japanese-keyed lookup.

Setup for each method

When to switch or stop

Fallbacks

The same reason is repeated three times consecutively.

Return to the preceding question and write one change that will occur for the people concerned.

Method guide: Nine Whys

Stop conditions

Before starting, the number of priorities or the decision-maker has not been determined.

Do not proceed to ranking; produce only the purpose and candidate list.

Cutting or appraising a particular department becomes the purpose.

Remove individual or departmental appraisal and return the question to alignment with organisational purpose.

Sources, rights and limits

This site has composed this programme's purpose, connections between methods, facilitation, roles, outputs, and switching conditions. See each method's individual page for its sources and licence.

Original source records and their required notices are retained below. Their presence does not mean a new legal or cultural-safety clearance. Original citation titles are kept in their source language.

Japanese resources and historical source records

Original Japanese plan and its print view · Japanese operation pack or starter materials

An English print edition is not provided here. The linked plans, print views and operation materials are Japanese resources.

Historical recorded publication holds

The following original hold statements are retained verbatim with their fixed source versions. They are not a statement of current acceptance, nor does this historical label resolve a source-specific restriction.

• English translation and rendered-page independent acceptance pending
• Method dependency source/text SHA binding and current source-specific rights verification pending
• Publication not cleared