Options

Much has been written in how to make choices and how to evaluate options, much less on where those options come from. In this short text I’ll try to share some thoughts on how to work with options.

Why do you need options

Even if everything seems to be working great, if you lack options or fall for the temptation not to invest in creating options you become vulnerable to external events and lose the ability to adapt. To put it simply, not having options exposes you to risk. If you have worked through your problem and created good options for alternative actions choosing a strategy will be a lot easier, as we will see later in the best case the strategy will be obvious and low risk. Chances are that when you end up in really bad and forced strategic decisions you will in the worst case have this problem because you have too few good options, and even if that is a painful situation the best option might simply be to create more options to have the possibility to choose a better strategy later.

Options come at a cost, both to think of them and to get resources to create them, it can be frustrating to balance this with all the other things that need to be done and this short term, even talking about options can be seen as confusing and overly time consuming. Optimization is a frequent reason for having too few options available, a system can easily over optimize itself to be good at doing what it currently does rather than spending some effort on alternatives. There is also a certain amount of human nature that wants to avoid thinking about what can happen in the future, especially the bad scenarios, and this also leads to a bias to avoid thinking about options. If the landscape you are navigating is competitive, and most are, a serious consequence of lacking options is that you risk becoming predictable. This can be exploited by the competition to force you into certain actions that you would have rather liked to avoid.

Discovering and creating options

Very few situations are without options, spending some effort on trying to think creatively on what options are available or can easily be created goes a long way, this also works wonders to avoid jumping to conclusions and start executing prematurely. Improving skills to see options you have should be nurtured, refuse to assume that you have only one or just a few options, always try to find variations and new ways. Discuss different views and opinions of the options, this might help to uncover aspects of the options you have that can be used to create new options.

Always aim for options to be complementary so that you can choose to execute multiple options at the same time and use that to increase the chance of success as well as speed to achieve the goals. If an option excludes other options or leads to a state where you have fewer options, consider how you can alter it to avoid getting into a dead end.

Avoid “too big to fail” or “do or die” thinking. This only limits creativity. This does not help with execution either, on the contrary it can severely limit morale if execution isn’t perfect. This mindset risks creating poor rationales, such as trying to dampen or decrease development of better options or supporting initiatives in order to keep focus on the only option. Picking one option and discarding others might display decisiveness which is easy to communicate and creates clarity which boosts morale. However this can easily turn into helplessness and despair if the “only option” turns out to be difficult to execute or simply insufficient. Although the single option narrative might feel like an easy boost to morale it can also easily become a road to poor leadership, the point of leadership is to help navigate and lead in complexity, not to try to oversimplify the situation to convince people they are working on the only thing that can work.

Collaboration

When you are in a collaborative environment rather than a competitive one you will need to expand your thinking about options a bit. How you work with options in a collaborative environment sends signals to others collaborating with you, and this in turn can affect which partners are willing to work with you as well as on what terms.

Commitment to not having options should be a very conscious decision and sends a very strong message, this signal can send a very attractive feeling to the recipient leading to mutual commitment but still has the risk of leading either party to be less than happy should anything change. Having options in terms of business partners and not using them sends an almost equally strong message of commitment but maintains the possibility to act and adapt if needed. A good foundation is when collaboration happens even when both parties have other options and help each other anyway. This will also foster good ethics between the parties and allow for changes should long term needs lead any of the parties on a divergent path, which happens frequently even when partners have started out with the best intentions.

Allowing others to have options and even supporting them in developing new options can be a very wholesome activity and the reverse, requiring or forcing someone to remove options could be an unethical act in most circumstances. Avoid tying partners up and reducing options for them, it is unethical and will not lead to long term benefits.