Option Solving Blog

A close friend had inherited a house in Florida. The friend lives in the North East, 1400 miles away. The friend’s relative had a live-in housekeeper and her male companion for many years who were very reluctant to vacate the property. That housekeeper had encouraged one of her adult children and his family to rent the house, until our friend-inheritor decided what to do with it. That relative-tenant is already experiencing financial difficulty and has failed to meet the past month’s rent, even though it was very reasonable for the area.

This new owner is too far away to keep an eye on the property, in case the embarrassed tenant starts to misbehave. Also, there appeared to be difficulties developing between the tenant and his family, and the long-time, live-in housekeeper and her companion. Additional bad vibes seemed to be brewing all around  the situation. Hence, the new owner found themselves in a difficult spot.

We introduced the new owner to option solving and encouraged that person to put together an appropriate question with due considerations. The following question is what surfaced: “ What is likely to be a friend’s best option for evicting some non-paying tenants: considering that a live-in person is relative of tenant, tenant has stopped paying rent for 1 month, owner is not able to watch the property, live-in relative has deteriorating relationship with tenant, and that bad vibes are developing all-around?” These considerations were around 50% of the likely list, but were the most vital ones…take a look at our latest example.

It was now necessary for our friend to create two framing yin and yang “bookends;” so as to help along our friend’s creative intuition to find the most likely option. The ‘bookends’ our friend came up with were, “Throw them out immediately ” and “Draw up more favorable lease .” Our Latest Example shows why these two bookend options were the least workable ones.

With our friend’s question and bookends in place,  it was now time to challenge that friend to produce at least five alternative, practical options  In this case, our friend produced six. Then we suggested that our friend sleep on these options, owing to the importance of the decision:

They were advised to look at the created pictogram immediately before going to sleep and then revisit it first thing in the morning; allowing their intuition to ruminate over the options during the night.  Such an approach would be making good use of emotional distancing and its benefits to decision making.

We recommended that once our friend’s mind had made a choice they should immediately start putting together an action initiative to pursue their choice, while all the issues were still fresh in mind. It would also show confidence in their intuition and well thought out instincts.

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: “The best option for two potential business partners to start their working relationship?” Let’s have your COMMENTS or go to peter@ ileadershipsolutions.com to connect with the blogger. Also consider buying the book: “Smart Decisions: Goodbye Problems, Hello Options.”)

Filed under: Uncategorized |