Option Solving Blog

Considerable numbers of business leaders and executives are challenged on how to hold their organizations and people together during the COVID-19 pandemic. This especially applies to the smaller entrepreneurial ones. It is also where optional solving comes into its own and when making quality decisions counts the most.

You as one of those business leaders/executives need to take a moment to apply your rational mind to pose a question to your fertile and powerful intuitive mind, such as: “What is my best option for holding my organization and people together during COVID-19 pandemic; considering 1) high % of businesses have temporarily closed down, 2) staff are required to stay at home, 3) financial resources are acutely short, and 4) uncertainty about when things will re-open again?” The consideration summary shows four key considerations to challenge everyone’s thinking about this issue. By keeping it to four, it will reduce the complexity of decision-making when the moment arrives: despite there being others.

You are then advised to create two yin and yang “bookends,” as these will help their intuitive minds to remain focus. Bookends such as these are vital for preventing people’s fertile intuitive minds from wandering and losing concentration. We are mostly unaware of how powerfully valuable but foot-loose our intuition can be unless we can properly keep it focused.   

Your bookends could well be: “Shut down” – lose opportunity to reopen, and “Sell-out for whatever can get,” difficulty in finding a buyer. We italicized detractors associated with these least likely options. Even so, they will nudge your intuitive thinking into high gear – see our Latest Worked Example.

Now would come your challenge to produce at least five realistic options, although you will see we proposed six – prior to any emotional distancing, which is a form of objective thinking, before making your choice …perhaps after 2 hours, later in the day, or first thing tomorrow morning. You can replace our proposed options with any of your own. You can see one of our options as: Option E – SBA loans to finance salaries + benefits until reopen.

You may decide to give yourself overnight to sleep on it. The other and even better option is to share it with your key team and then step away from this pictograph, as indicated above, and then make a collective decision based upon anonymous votes. From there you can put an action initiative together, while things are still fresh in your minds, to implement your decision.

If you have an example of your own, please share it with this blogger, through the COMMENTS area or contact him at peter@ileadershipsolutions.com – Subject: COVID blog.  Thanks Option Solving. (NOTE: Our next posting will be in two week’s time: “Peeling the Onion: What is my best option for holding my organization and people together during COVID-19 pandemic?” 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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