Option Solving Blog

Quite by chance the other day, your editor was chatting with a friend about that friend’s clear travails with his son’s current career track. His son was not quite thirty years old, had been heading toward a master’s degree at college when a personal tragedy struck and knocked him right off track. Before that he’d had few career experiences other than during college breaks. It was now important to restore his career confidence and get him into a fulfilling, remunerated position.

Your editor introduced his friend to option solving as a means of flushing out a potential optimum option. Consequently, got his friend to produce an appropriate question, such as: “What is my optimum option for inspiring a pre-thirties adult to set his career back on track; considering 1) he’s been through a traumatic experience, 2) he’s very capable at certain things, 3) his work experience is rather limited, and 4) he’s not readily open to advice?” Despite there being other considerations, these four were again were likely the most important ones. So he decided to continue with them to keep his ultimate approach relatively simple.

Now he produced two yin and yang “bookends,” as these would also further aid his focus. 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 properly focused.   

His bookends turned out to be: “Let sleeping dogs lie,” with possible unintended consequences, and “Impose a top-notch counselor to handle,” the expense may be fairly hefty and his son’s willingness will be suspect. So, both constituted his least likely options for the reasons given. Even so, they served the purpose of kick-starting his intuitive mind to come-up with some realistic options– see our Latest Worked Example.

It was now appropriate for him to produce a minimum of five to six reasonable options A-F, so as to fully explore the most likely possibilities. He came up with five and left it open again to come up  with a sixth before embarking upon some emotional distancing – a form of objective thinking – before making his choice…perhaps after 2 hours, later that day thinking, or first thing the following morning.

At that point, depending upon the option that rose to the surface, he would then immediately produce an action initiative, or create another option solving pictograph related to the best way to approach his son about choosing his optimum career option.

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 a friend’s optimum option for approaching his son about getting his career back on track?” 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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