Bull's Eye Diagram Template

About the Bull’s Eye Diagram

When making a decision, teams sometimes struggle to adjudicate between priorities. This is especially true for high-stakes decisions, where every task on your to-do list feels like it could make or break a project. The inability to prioritize tasks can lead to gridlock among team members, inefficient meetings, and even low morale.

Keep reading to learn more about the bull’s eye diagram.

What is a bull’s eye diagram?

A bull’s eye diagram is a simple tool that enables teams to clarify priorities before making a decision. As the name suggests, the chart is set up to look like a bull’s eye. The innermost circle contains the highest priority items, the middle circle contains medium-priority items, and the largest circle contains the lowest priority items.

The beauty of the bull’s eye diagram is that it eliminates any possibility for gridlock. Teams struggle to make decisions and build momentum when every task on your list seems like it should be your highest priority. Overwhelmed by tasks, the team fails to move forward. But the bull’s eye diagram solves this problem simply by design. Once you slot high-priority items into the smallest circle, this forces you to shift lesser priorities around, and it becomes impossible to overwhelm your team with a long list of high-priority items.

When to use a bull’s eye diagram

Use a bull’s eye chart any time you need to establish priorities, make critical decisions, or talk through a process and remove obstacles with your team. Gridlock occurs when teams struggle to make big decisions. Bull’s eye diagrams empower your team to break down a broader decision into smaller ones, slotting tasks into the diagram according to their level of importance.

Create your own bull’s eye chart

Listing tasks on an online canvas allows your team to quickly move around information related to new tasks added to the bull’s eye. Once you prioritize the tasks in the diagram, you can organize and rearrange them as needed. The diagram enables your team to see relationships and categories and reprioritize, too. The bull’s eye is an easily understood diagram that helps you clarify project priorities.

Making your own bull’s eye diagrams is easy. Miro’s virtual collaboration platform is the perfect canvas to create and share them. Get started by selecting the Bull’s Eye Diagram Template, then take the following steps to make one of your own.

Step 1: Establish a goal.

Before you start filling out the diagram, your team should align on a goal. Are you trying to make a decision? Overcoming a challenge? Articulate your goal before ironing out priorities.

Step 2: Make a list of tasks.

Think about all the tasks you’ll need to accomplish to achieve your goal. Don’t worry about putting them in any particular order. Timeline and prioritization are irrelevant at this stage. Just focus on getting the lists of tasks on paper. If you’re working through the bull’s eye diagram with your team, it’s helpful to give each team member a few minutes to make their own list. Then you can come together to consolidate the tasks into a master list.

Step 3: Fill in the largest circle.

If you start by trying to make decisions about high-priority tasks, you might get stuck. Instead, focus on the lower-stakes items first by filling out the largest part of the circle. Refer back to your list of tasks. Are any of them unnecessary to complete your goal? Are there any “nice-to-haves” instead of “need-to-haves”? Give each team member a few minutes to think through the low-priority items before discussing as a group.

Step 4: Fill in the middle circle.

Next, think about medium-priority tasks. These items don’t need to be done immediately, but they are important for achieving your goal. The middle-priority circle is a bit smaller than the low-priority circle, which makes it more challenging to narrow down your tasks. Discuss with your teammates and come to a consensus.

Step 5: Fill in the smallest circle.

Now it’s time to figure out your mission-critical priorities. Since this is the smallest circle, you can only fit a few priorities in there. Refer back to your list of tasks. Think about high-priority tasks as necessary conditions. In other words, tasks you must accomplish in order to complete the project. Which two or three tasks are vital to your project? Talk it over with your team members, then complete your tasks and achieve your goal!