Option Solving Blog

A team of executives had recently completed a retreat to formulate a strategic framework, followed by different initiative teams that would put together appropriate activities to move things forward. That done, it was now time to share the overall picture companywide, so that everyone was on the same page and fired up to participate to their best ability. The key team’s challenge: to communicate this picture in the most effective way.
This key team got their heads together to create the right question that would engage their collective intuitive minds…a collective wisdom resource so large, between the seven of them, that it’s virtually impossible to define it. That question started with: “What is our best means for conveying our important company strategic initiatives, considering…”
Finding the right considerations to accompany this question was going to be vital, since these factors would challenge their intuitive mind to search life-experience data bases for similar situations and outcomes. These turned out to be: current budgetary restrictions on company travel, the need to get everyone’s “buy-in,” make any presentation as simple and engaging as possible, and to encourage ongoing participation by everyone. You can see the full question in the Latest Example.
Their next step was to find two “bookends”…almost non-starter options that would help frame the option picture. Ones that immediately came to mind for them were: “Just send everyone a copy of the strategic materials,” which would imply no personal introduction or explanation and “Give everyone a personalized overview of strategic materials” …equally unlikely. Team intuitive minds would naturally reject these extremes, but then come up with more plausible options.
With these in place, they now exercised their collective intuitive minds to produce a more plausible range of options between these two extremes. The third was: “Key team make a video presentation and distribute to all company areas.” You can now take a look at the four other options in our Latest Example.
At the moment their option solving picture was complete, they ventured into some “emotional distancing.” Such activity included reviewing some other unrelated matters for about 10-15 minutes. Emotional distancing makes time for peoples intuitive mind to subconsciously consider past experiences and make trade-offs on each option. Pictures are such a good way of engaging our intuitive mind and sorting out all the implications. It does so with the speed of light. It is incredibly fast. Our intuitive minds also cannot resist answering questions, which nature has trained them to do.
Our group of 7 was now in a good position to make its choice, which it did without any fuss. We won’t reveal this choice because you would end up second guessing them rather than focusing on this great technique. Needless to say, they were happy with their choice. They also had “peace of mind” knowing they had looked at all their other options, therefore were content with their choice. Happy holidays.
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: “Using Option Solving to decide on ‘What is my best option for handling my team’s holiday party?’” Let’s have your COMMENTS or go to peter@ileadershipsolutions.com to connect with the blogger.)

Filed under: Uncategorized |