Option Solving Blog

One of our friends was discussing her daughter’s college options the other day. Things had not been going well for some time and she was really quite upset about her daughter’s college prospects. We began to explore her daughter’s options and, as she became more interested in a more objective approach, she was ready to explore the idea of option solving.
Once she became familiar with the approach, she participated in mapping out an initial, rational question. Her ultimate question, with its related considerations, ended up as: “What is the best option for our friend’s daughter for getting back on her feet and finishing her degree; considering that she’s just had some sort of breakdown, has developed some unhelpful habits, tends not to keep her commitments, and it’s important she gets a degree relative to her career aspirations?” We’re sure you can imagine there were other considerations, but these represented the most significant ones. Such considerations would play an important part in shaping our friend’s intuitive judgment, and ultimately that of her daughter, too, when the time came for her to make a solid decision.
Now our friend proceeded to come up with two “bookends,” which would function both as extreme, unlikely markers and prompt her creative thinking. After some due deliberation her bookends came out as, at one end “Take her to task and challenge her to get a hold of herself ,” as the Yin, while the Yang at the other end was: “Give her everything she needs to move forward .” She has indicated why these were both highly unlikely in our Latest Example. Once she had her bookends in place, it set her intuitive mind churning to come up with other realistic choices.
With this in place, she now had to devise at least five options; so as to pull out the most feasible possibilities. In fact we left room for six, one for her daughter to propose, if she came up with an additional one (or maybe more). One of the six, turned out to be: “Help her set-up a daily/weekly framework to give her a new platform to build upon”…Option C. Her four other considered options are again shared by clicking on our Latest Example tab… click on the tab and view for yourself.
Our friend’s pictogram was now complete, and awaited her daughter’s input. Our friend was primed to share it with her daughter at the first opportunity. When this occurred, she was encouraged to allow her daughter some time for emotional distancing to make an optimum decision. She should get her daughter to put the pictogram out of sight for a while and focus on something else, while her intuitive senses absorbed and worked through her different options (including her own, if that /they, was/were injected into the picture).
Since it was such a momentous decision for her daughter, I suggested that she get her daughter to sleep on it. She should review the pictogram before she went to sleep and immediately she awoke. Whatever her intuition rested-on would be her likely best option.
Once she made her choice, she should be encouraged to develop her most likely game plan immediately while still fresh in her mind. What choice would you have made, if you were in her daughter’s shoes?
If you have an option solving example of your own, please share it with this blogger, through the COMMENTS area.
Thanks Option Solving. (NOTE: Next posting in 2 weeks: “What is my best New Year’s resolution option?” – It’s that time of year again. Let’s have your COMMENTS or go to peter@ileadershipsolutions.com to connect with the blogger.)

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