Explore your options

In one of the lectures last week, Jeff touched on the point that one of the key steps of the decision-making process was exploring and developing the options or alternatives available, through various means. Doing so tends to result in having more choice obviously, but it's also likely that you might spot a more out-of-the-box solution than otherwise that challenges what is expected. If I'm honest, the creative solutions that our team came up with were not the result of a particular brainstorming session, or any special technique. They spontaneously arose during the natural course of our collective approach. Perhaps we had an element of luck in this, but I think that the really open nature of our working environment helped this.

I think that this is a really important lesson to take-away. Always take the time to think what else you could do, before you take a decision. This is especially important if you're not particularly happy with any of your present options! Real progress only ever occurs by step change, when someone like Gandhi brings to the fore the ideas of total non-violence, or Steve Jobs introduces the Ipod, or Ipad for that matter. You can bet that they were not happy with the status quo!

It's obviously a difficult thing to do in practice - there is not always time to generate alternatives or to challenge the assumptions of a given situation. But, you can be sure that if you have done so, your eventual decision is likely to be more robust, because you know a lot more about what else you (or others competing with you) might have done. It's quite similar in that sense to having more information when making any decision. Sure, you might become paralysed, waiting to act until you are sure, but the very fact that you have considered what is relevant means that your informed decision is one you can have confidence in.

: 18 Mar 2011 21:16 |  Tags: Challenge Decisions Mbe Options Rdm |  Comments (1) |  Report a problem