Anyone who has spent any length in time as a coach, will have worked with clients who lack confidence in making an important decision when faced with multiple different options.
In my own personal experience I have found myself procrastinating over important choices for such a long time that I have impacted on how effective the application of the chosen option could be. I am aware of my tendency to analyse my options in great detail, considering the pros and cons, the potential benefits and pitfalls of my decisions. When faced with several possible directions of travel, my analytical nature can have a paralysing effect and mean that I don’t move in any direction at all.
How often have you, a colleague or a client remarked; ‘I wish I could be more decisive?’ or ‘I would like to know how to trust my gut more?’ If those sentiments apply to you or people you work with here’s a simple thing to try which will be familiar to anyone who has ever watched a draw for a competition like the FA Cup.
Options shootout.
Step 1:
Write down all of the possible options on a small piece of paper with the intention of getting to 4, 8, 16, or even 32 different answers.
This is where a lot of new original thinking can occur. Its unlikely that your list of options will fit neatly into one of the 4 numbers above, you may fairly quickly get to let’s say 13 different routes as you will already have considered these, but in getting up to 16 you may need to come up with something new. Perhaps ask yourself what one of your role models might put forward as an option, maybe consider what you would add if you had no fear of reprisals or perhaps what you might throw in as a ‘maverick wildcard’ even if your logic suggests it may not be the best idea.
Step 2:
Fold up each piece of paper and pop them all in a bowl or a hat. For this exercise lets assume we have 16 options written down.
Step 3:
Draw two slips of paper out in turn, set yourself a short time limit (even as little as 10 seconds) and make a decision of which one to send through the next round and which one to put in the bin. At the end of the draw you will have 8 options, put those back in the hat and draw again leaving 4 winners and 4 losers, repeat the process for a ‘semi final’ until you are left with 2 remaining options. Set yourself a time limit, quickly consider the last two options and declare your winner!
Step 4:
For some who are prone to procrastination it may feel unnatural to force such a quick decision. If so try ending with another short exercise – the pre-mortem.
Imagine you are called into a board meeting to explain the reasons for your decision. In no more than 10 minutes write down why you chose the option you did, imagine the most difficult questions you could be asked in that scenario and how you would respond. Consider these questions for example:
How would you defend your decision even if it didn’t work as well as you would have hoped?
What issues can you forsee with your chosen option and how can you respond to get back on track?
Who could help you work through the possible scenarios and work out the best way to respond?
Why this works?
This exercise helps decision making in many important ways. The writing down of the options, forces you to summarise each one succinctly adding greater clarity to the process. Inevitably you will have to make up a few options on the spot to get up to the desired number of 8 / 16 / 32 etc, this forces rapid creative thinking and encourages you to produce ideas from a different viewpoint, such as imagining what a former mentor might do. Very importantly these new ideas have to be put onto paper quickly and don’t end up getting critiqued to the stage where you have lost all confidence in them. Interestingly it is often these ideas added as wildcards at the end that ultimately win out.
For many of the options you will write down you have already considered them at length but you may not yet be consciously aware of how you feel about them. The rapid nature of this process helps access your instinct, you may have spent hours deliberating the merits and potential pitfalls of Option A without coming to a conclusion, but when set against Option B in a straight shootout you will inevitably make a definitive judgement.
Finally, the addition of a quick pre-mortem usually stops clients from continuing to ruminate on a decision and lose momentum. By rapidly considering future outcomes and the best response to them, you may find that you are at peace with the decision and can move forward to action.
How to apply it?
This a great exercise for working alone, when the decision rests with you and you don’t have a team around you to share that load. It is particularly effective when you have already given a good amount of thinking time to a lot of options but have got stuck and need to commit to a course of action.
However it is by no means limited to this application and can be part of some great group exercises. The options produced could come from multiple sources, each member of the team could generate them for the team leader to make the decision, or for the most democratic decision making process, try giving the same options to each stakeholder and asking them to pick a top 4. Then ask them to give 4 points to their favoured option, 3 for 2nd place and so on. The option that has the most points from the collective can then be the one you move forward with together.
As with any tool, it’s one to play around with, even if you start on a decision away from the workplace. You may want to give it a try the next time you are unsure about what type of takeaway to order or where to take the kids on the first day of half-term. I have used Options Shootout with individual clients and with teams in a variety of different scenarios and always enjoyed the clarity it offers, whatever the decision may be.
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