In strategy workshops, the financial objectives often end up with a lower priority score than the rest.
That doesn't mean the team thinks finance is unimportant. Of course it matters. It's the reason the business can do anything else. But the work behind a financial objective is mostly monitoring and reporting, and that effort sits with the finance team and the leadership team. It doesn't need the whole room to put its energy there. So the number comes out low, and if nobody has explained what the number means, it's easy to read it as a statement about importance.
Finance is the example I see most often, but it isn't the only one. The same thing happens anywhere an objective matters a great deal and still doesn't need much new effort from the people in the room.
What a priority score is measuring
When a team shares out one hundred percent of its focus across the objectives on its strategy map, it's tempting to read the result as a league table. High means important, low means not.
That's the wrong reading. The priority score is about where the team's effort goes in this period. It's a different question from how much an objective matters. An objective can be critical to the business and still need very little new effort, either because it's well handled already or because the work is watching it, not driving it.
Remember that the map is a system
I find the scores easiest to understand when I remind people what the map is. It isn't a ranked list of separate goals. It's a system, with objectives that connect to and affect each other. Effort applied in one part of the system shows up as results in another. (I've written about why I still use this four-perspective map.)
Seen that way, a priority score is simply an answer to the question: where should we put our effort right now, to move the system in the direction we want? Financial results are largely an outcome of what happens elsewhere on the map, so a lot of the effort to move them goes into the other objectives, and the financial objective gets watched.
It also explains why the scores aren't permanent. The right place to push changes as the system changes. An objective that gets a low score this period may get a high one in the next, because the priority has shifted, or because the work that dominated this period has done its job. The reverse is true too.
It happens elsewhere too
A digital product team at a large insurer was doing this exercise. The room was mostly product managers. One objective was closely tied to a specific product line, and it ended up with a low single-digit percentage of the total. The person who looked after that product was in the room.
The product was important to the company, and that wasn't in question. The reason was different from the finance case. The objective wasn't closely linked to the team's biggest priority that year, which was moving customers to buy online. The score showed where the push was going, and the push was somewhere else.
Two different reasons, one risk: someone reads a low number as a judgement on their work.
What helps in the room
I don't think there's a trick. But a few things make the difference between a moment that's understood and one that turns into resentment.
Say what the scores mean before anyone scores. Priority scores are about where effort goes this period, not how much something matters. If you wait until someone's objective has a low number, the explanation sounds like a defence.
Keep the objective on the map. A low score isn't a deletion. The objective stays visible, still owned by the same person, and still part of the system. Seeing it there makes the point better than any explanation.
Ask what the number is really telling you. For finance, the answer is usually "we need to watch this, not push it." For a product line, it might be "not this year." Naming which one it is turns a vague worry into a clear statement.
Say that it's for this period. Put a date on the scores and agree to revisit them. Turning "never" into "not this time" does more than any reassurance.
Let the group set the scores. It matters that the team did this together, in the room. A manager handing down a low score would feel like a judgement. A team that has just decided collectively where its effort should go can understand that the numbers come from them.
Why it's worth the discomfort
It would be easy to avoid the issue, by scoring everything about the same or by letting the loudest voices pull the numbers up. Teams do this often, and the cost is quiet. If everything is a priority, nothing is, and the map stops being a statement of where the effort goes.
A low number handled well usually leads to one of the most useful conversations in the workshop, because it makes the team say what it's pushing on this period, what it's only watching, and what it's choosing not to do, and it gives everyone a reason to look again next time.
If you facilitate this kind of session, expect that moment, and name it before it arrives.