Option Solving Blog

A recent client discussion revealed one of her ongoing challenges, based upon her inclination to recruit inexperienced talent into her group and then orient and develop them into productive team members. She’s had a fair amount of success in doing that so far. However, she’s also had the experience of these young recruits joining with a decent education and expecting to progress as quickly as possible. Not only is this unrealistic, since there’s a lot to learn, but it also impacts morale within her team, if people are leaving to grab higher positions and income…even if they realistically don’t warrant it.

Your editor felt it was appropriate for the client to reconsider her hiring approach so as to give hirees a more realistic career view, at the time of hiring, which would put their aspirations into perspective. So we came up with the following question: “What is our optimum possibility for bringing fresh talent up to full-speed; considering 1) we don’t fully understand their potential at the outset, 2) we only wish to invest in them if they’re likely to stay, 3) we have to manage their career impatience, and 4) we need to develop a steady pipeline of talent within our growing company?” By sticking with these top four considerations, despite several others, it will reduce undue complications in any final conclusion.

After putting this question into place, we then created two yin and yang “bookends” as outlier possibilities, since they would help focus the client’s intuitive, decision-making mind on his most realistic options. Bookends such as these are vital for preventing people’s fertile intuitive minds from wandering and losing focus. We are mostly unaware of how powerfully valuable but foot-loose our intuition can be unless effectively focused.   

These two bookends turned out to be: “Let them find their own way” and “Send them on 2 year MBA course”: both of which were the client’s least likely options for the reasons given. Even so, these bookends would challenge the client to consider and produce their most realistic options – see our Latest Worked Example.

This positioned the client to come-up with at least five reasonable options, so as to stretch her range of possibilities as much as possible. They left it open for the client to produce a sixth option (F), after the initial session, so as to give her an opportunity to make an additional suggestion(s). Such an activity would help build her “buy-in” and commitment. Your editors favored option, off the bat, was: “Option- D: Create role staircase for them – new recruits – to scale, learn from, and gain practical experience?”

With this “pictogram” now in place, the client could then set some time aside for emotional distancing – a form of objective thinking – before making any choice…perhaps after 2 hours, later that day, or first thing the following morning. Whatever that choice, she could then decide whether to further “Peel the Onion,” in order to give them additional sub-insights on how to move forward, or create an immediate action initiative while everything was still fresh in her mind.

If you have an example of your own, please share it with this blogger, through the COMMENTS area.  Thanks Option Solving. (NOTE: Next posting will be in two week’s time: “What is our optimum option for expanding our market presence?” 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” through amazon.com)

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