Creative Yet Feasible Alternatives

Alternatives are “what we can do” and the second dimension of decision quality. If we don’t have choices, there is no decision to be made! We need a manageable set of alternatives that are creative, feasible, significantly different, comprehensive and compelling.

There’s a (probably apocryphal) story about Henry Kissinger when he was Secretary of State under Nixon. His staffers came to him with a recommendation for how to deal with the Soviets, which he looked at and asked, “What are the alternatives?” They had none, and so were sent away, chastened. They returned with three alternatives: 1) nuclear war, 2) abject surrender and 3) the original recommendation!

Wide-ranging, creative and significantly different—yes. But feasible or compelling—definitely not!

The opposite of too few alternatives is having too many. We see this all the time, often a lot of minor variations on a single theme. And often not a particularly attractive theme at that. The decision maker is paralysed because he cannot see the wood for the trees, and he knows there has to be something better he can do.

Tools:

• Brainstorming and other creativity techniques
• Decision table

Failure Modes:

• Only one alternative
• Missing a great alternative
• Too many variations on one theme
• Considering infeasible alternatives

100% decision quality is when we have evaluated fully a set of alternatives and, based on what we have learned, have constructed a hybrid alternative. This combines the best features of the evaluated alternatives—it’s an alternative that nobody thought of—but is more valuable than any of them. Nothing beats the power of a new alternative!

Finally, for best quality we need also to understand how to implement each alternative.

Generating alternatives is the second step in the dialogue decision process and alternatives should be agreed by the steering committee before there is too much evaluation work done. It is important also that all the agreed alternatives are evaluated to an equal depth, so that we have all we need to know to assemble the hybrid alternative.

Where have you seen decision failures caused by the lack of a good alternative?

This article is one of a series looking at the six dimensions of decision quality.

• Useful frame—are we answering the right question?
• Creative yet feasible alternatives—having a small set of wide-ranging choices
• Meaningful and reliable information, particularly about risk
• Clear preferences and trade-offs
• Sound reasoning, and clear communication about complex issues
• Commitment to action.