Option Solving Blog

Not so long ago I found myself talking with a client project leader for a fast growing medical devices company. The market is developing rapidly for hospital handheld devices, where vital patient bedside information can be rapidly transmitted to the responsible physician or nurse.

Insufficient technical staff to meet the demand was providing a certain amount of stress for this project leader. She had to pull new teams together quickly once new projects came in, although her company was not in a position to hire people in advance without projects actually having arrived in-house. Additionally, based upon local demographics, she was challenged to assimilate technical people because of their diverse ethnic and cultural backgrounds.

At some point we got around to figuring out the most effective question to get the option solving ball rolling and thereby resolve her dilemma. After some discussion, her question started to emerge as: “What is our best immediate option for obtaining sufficient technical people for completing projects, considering…”

To increase the effectiveness of the question, it is important to include her key considerations to provoke her intuitive capabilities into higher gear. She ultimately came up with 5 or 6, although particularly focused on 3: “…considering cultural differences within staff, tremendous time pressures, and time to complete multiple projects at once.”

Now that the question was complete, she could take the next option solving step, namely, deriving “bookends.” Bookends are those extreme options, the ying and yang extreme possibilities that would help frame a cluster of likely options. The pair she chose were: “Not wait for technical resources to appear” and “Disregard deadlines.” Why don’t we finish her story in the next blog, see below.

Please refer to the Latest Example to view the overall picture of this dilemma and its potential solution. If you have an example of your own, please share it with this blogger, through the COMMENTS area.
Thanks Option Solving. (NOTE: Next posting in 2 weeks to finish: “Using Option Solving to decide on ‘Having sufficient technical resources available?’” We will appreciate your COMMENTS or go to peter @ileadershipsolutions.com to connect with the blogger.)

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