Option Solving Blog

Not so long ago, a colleague and I were grappling with that perennial issue within the organization world, “Getting a key person to change his or her mind.” Of course, one of the first things which should be done, when faced with this sort of dilemma, is to determine that changing people’s minds will be beneficial for them.

In this case, we felt that it would be significantly beneficial to this person’s organization if we were to change his mind. We had a particular exercise in mind that we wanted him to experience, which would have a worthy impact both on him and his organization. However, he had closed the door, at least for the time being.

My colleague and I initially set about formulating an appropriate question, commencing with the words: “What is my best alternative for encouraging Jack to reconsider and participate in out XYZ session?” This, however, had to be bolstered by some thoughtful considerations, such as: He’s already made up his mind, He could use the outcome to provide great leadership to ABC organization, He could benefit from some positive re-education, and of course Dealing with his financial issues.

From this we figured out appropriate “bookends,” those more extreme options that help frame the best outcome. In this case, it quickly became apparent the most obvious two were: Let sleeping dogs lie, and at the other end Offer to do a free demo (having already done one free demo related to something else, this became a less tasteful option from our perspective).

From there we started to explore possible options, which included: Have lunch with this person and a third party confidante; Give the third party confidante a free snapshot view of the proposed XYZ session; Get an influential board member to participate in a free snapshot session, and so on. Again, it’s not important to reveal my colleague’s chosen option (we came up with 6) and, at the moment of writing this scenario, my colleague hadn’t fully tested it out. But it does go to show how option solving can be so valuable in a testing situation like this.

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Thanks Option Solving. (NOTE: Next posting in 2 weeks: “Using Option Solving to decide on ‘Making the most of my New Year’s resolution?’”  You’re your COMMENTS or go to peter @ileadershipsolutions.com to connect with the blogger.)

Filed under: Business Decision Making | Tagged: Getting People to Reconsider |