Option Solving Blog

We apologize for the hiatus in sharing Option Solving (OS) examples over the past six weeks due to other key priorities. However, we will now kick off a new round by reconsidering an issue which is still top of everyone’s mind: Covid and minimizing its impact on society: mindful of almost 1M Covid related deaths over the past 2 years. In February 2020 Covid was making rapid advances and no one knew how to deal with it. Now we’re much wiser but still uncertain about what lies ahead. So it’s worthwhile revisiting our OS exercise of July 2021and see how the country can still build on that.  .  

We therefore come back to posing an appropriate OS question: “What is our political leadership’s latest optimum option for minimizing Covid’s impact; considering 1) new variants are highly contagious, 2) possibility of vaccine’s potency wearing-off, 3) resistance by some people to vaccination, and 4) impact on sustaining economic recovery?” Again, it’s appropriate for government leaders 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.

We would encourage our leaders to choose two appropriate yin and yang “bookends”,as these will help keep their 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 two bookends remain as: “Let Covid run rampant” – Death rate politically unacceptable;and “Close everything down again” – Could lead to world economic catastrophe. 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.

Its advisors have come up with its six most realistic options – A thru F – after some thought. Now the leaders are positioned to pursue emotional distancing beforethey proceed with any outcome decision. They 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 leader team was initially particularly intrigued by – Option D: Continual education programs to encourage earliest full vaccination. The govern- ment’s leaders then decided to sleep on it until their following morning and then act accordingly. It will stick with whatever option the team’s intuition chose to avoid unhelpful confusion and capitalize on their aggregated intuitive 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: “Peeling the Onion: What is our political leadership’s latest optimum option for minimizing Covid’s impact?”  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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