Option Solving Blog

From our recent option solving exercise, Christine was leading her client toward discovering its optimum strategic option for 2022. Her client’s leadership team collectively decided that Option D, Brand Marketing, would be its preferred option. That team then decided to use an Option Solving technique called Peeling the Onion to figure this out.  

Peeling the Onion meant repeating the option solving exercise again, although as a sub-set exercise. Hence under Christine’s watchful, advisory eye her client’s leader team created the following appropriate question: “In light of choosing Option D – Brand Marketing: what is her client leader team’s best option for pursuing this; considering 1) executives can be somewhat naïve about Brand Mktg 2) they may not be open to making the right investment, 3) they may be inclined to take the decisions alone, and 4) their leader team may not possess sufficient, strategic talent?” Again, it’s appropriate for the leader team to focus on just these latter four considerations to reduce complexity in any eventual decision – when the ultimate decision moment arrives – despite there being many other possible considerations out there.

Her client leader team was then encouraged to choose two fresh, appropriate yin and yang “bookends”,as these would help keep its intuitive minds focused against other mental distractions. Bookends such as these are vital for preventing our 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 keep it properly focused on such occasions.   

Their final two new bookends turned out to be: “Key executive takes a gut ‘branding’ decision” – No input-engagement of leader team;and “Bring in high-flying marketing agency” – Expensive and time to bring up to speed. You will note the italicized detractors associated with these least likely options, which therefore put them out of consideration. Even so, these bookends now nudged her client’s leadership team’s intuitive thinking into high gear to find more promising options – see ourLatest Worked Example.

The team ultimately came up with its six most realistic options – A thru F – after additional thought. Now it was positioned to pursue emotional distancing beforeit proceeded with any outcome decision. It would then review these declared options, perhaps after 2 hours, later in the day, or first thing the following morning, before arriving at an optimal conclusion. You can replace its proposed options with any of your own.

While all the options looked quite relevant, the team was initially particularly intrigued by – Option CC: Develop an insightful value proposition – ergo “brand” – with leader team. The team decided it would sleep on it until the following morning and then act accordingly. It would stick with whatever option the team’s intuition chose to avoid unhelpful confusion and capitalize on their aggregated brain power.

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 .  Thanks Option Solving. (NOTE: Our next posting will be in two week’s time: “Christine challenges leader team to fully engage its key teams to pursue strategic vision?” 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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A conversation the other day with Christine, a rather knowledgeable person about the digital and e-commerce world, revealed how she was trying to figure out her best way forward with her emerging advisory marketing business. Fortunately she had a number of options, although the window for capitalizing on these was likely to diminish fairly rapidly owing to the number of players entering the field. She therefore had to make the most hay while the sun shone in her favor.

Already being an advocate of option solving, she put the following question together to start the ball rolling: “What is Christine’s optimum strategic option for 2022; considering 1) organizations are clamoring to discern their best e-commerce approach, 2) there’s desperate shortage of e-commerce know-how among executives, 3) it’s unclear how much they’re willing to pay for objective advice, and 4) there’s a limited time-window before e-commerce advisory  becomes fiercely competitive?” It’s appropriate for Christine to focus on just these four considerations to reduce her complexity in any eventual decision – when the ultimate decision moment arrives – despite there being many other possible considerations out there.

Christine was then encouraged to choose two appropriate yin and yang “bookends”,as these would help keep her intuitive mind focused against other mental distractions. Bookends such as these are vital for preventing our 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 keep it properly focused on such occasions.   

Her final two new bookends turned out to be: “Revert to traditional advertizing” – Losing credibility;and “Use AI to make all the decisions” – Likely to backfire. You will note the italicized detractors associated with these least likely options, which therefore put them out of consideration. Even so, these bookends now nudged Christine’s intuitive thinking into high gear to find more promising options – see ourLatest Worked Example.

She ultimately came up with her six most realistic options – A thru F – after additional thought. Now she was positioned to pursue emotional distancing beforeshe proceeded with any outcome decision. She would then review these declared options, perhaps after 2 hours, later in the day, or first thing the following morning, before arriving at an optimal conclusion. You can replace her proposed options with any of your own.

While they all look quite relevant, Christine was initially particularly intrigued by – Option E: Content marketing. She decided she would sleep on it until the following morning and then act accordingly. She would stick with whatever option her intuition chose to avoid unhelpful confusion.

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 .  Thanks Option Solving. (NOTE: Our next posting will be in two week’s time: “What is President Biden’s best option to turn around his approval ratings?” 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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