The action: Avoid an either/or-mindset by coming up with a range of ideas.
The long-form: The secret weapon to difficult decisions is usually not better judgement or more analysis, but coming up with more alternatives. Here are a few ways this can show up:
Decision-making: In the Heath-brothers excellent book “Decisive”, the first step is Widen your options. All too often we lock ourselves into thinking this is an “either-or”-choice, when in reality we could come up with a whole host of new alternatives. Or we could combine ideas:
Narrow framing leads us to overlook options. […] We need to uncover new options and, when possible, consider them simultaneously through multitracking. […] When life offers us a “this or that” choice, we should have the gall to ask whether the right answer might be “both.
Chip and Dan Heath in Decisive
Coaching: In John Whitman’s model for coaching – the O in GROW means asking the coachee to consider which options, possibilities and strengths are at their disposal.
Strategy: In McKinsey’s building blocks of strategy, companies are advised to come up with multiple alternatives, not only for our potential pathways to winning, but to potential future scenarios too.
Military operations: In the same way, the Military Decision Making Process (f40) requires multiple scenarios for both enemy and own force courses of action.
Inventing more alternatives leads to less obvious, and often better alternatives. In strategy, the name of the game is making a set of choices different to that of your competitors. The most accessible alternatives are usually already taken, so the gold lies in the non-obvious choices that only appear after the first rounds of brainstorming.
Read more:
First Forty 