Option Solving Blog

Two key owners had been working on building their senior leadership team to take on running their company more from day-to-day, leaving them to primarily focus on the future. The five key players had been in the company for some time, but had rather tended to go their own way. For that reason, a more concerted effort was being made to work together as a team. But as is the case when you have a bunch of strong personalities, it was not going to be all plain sailing. A team had been formed : now was the time for storming to occur before it would start norming or performing. The storming had already started, in terms of people either not speaking with each other, or not participating in meetings, and so forth.

Already being conversant with option solving, the two owners were happy to start considering options precipitated by the question: “What is our best possibility of getting our key team through the “storming” phase of its evolution, considering the personalities involved, don’t wish to lose current momentum, that it will be a delicate proposition, and a positive outcome could help the business considerably?” The latter four considerations were only 50% of those considered, but these appeared to be the most important ones right now.

They then gave thought to creating two Ying and Yang “bookends;” as their most way-out options. These would serve as a framework between which more plausible options would be slotted in. Our latest example shows these bookends as: “Take a passive stance,” at one end and at the other end, “Demand weekly meetings until we get through it.” When you look at our latest example, you will see why these two were the least acceptable. This was all good because it really started to challenge their intuitive minds, which would eventually make the best call as well as spur their creative juices.

Now they were ready to produce at least five different, possible options and in fact came up with six – see our Latest Example. One intriguing option was: “Continue with 1-on-1 tactical discussions and keep encouraging individuals to work better together ”…option F. You can view their other five choices in our Latest Example. What option would you have thought was the most promising?

We turned the option solving picture over and started to converse about other company issues as a form of emotional distancing and after about 20 minutes we turned it over again for them to promptly make their choice. We will take a look at that in 2 weeks time, since the duo decided that they would “Peel the Onion”, to get a better handle on their final approach, rather than create an action initiative right away. They already felt better, now that they had come up with some interesting alternatives

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: “Use Peel the Onion to get an even better fix on ‘Getting our key team through the storming phase?’” We’re always interested in your COMMENTS or go to peter @ileadershipsolutions.com to connect with the blogger.)

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