What are Your Alternatives?

When analysing a situation, it's important to identify possible alternatives and evaluate their viability. You should consider the feasible solutions, ensuring that they align with realistic, implementable decision criteria that reflect the organisation's values and mission. The alternatives should be assessed against these criteria, allowing the audience to clearly understand why your chosen solution is the best option.

It's essential to avoid making decisions that require further investigation when you have incomplete information. While imperfect information is common, it's crucial to make a clear decision. Avoid using a "sandwich" method, where undesirable alternatives are presented to make the chosen solution appear better. Instead, recognise that all alternatives can be valuable, but one will stand out as the best due to specific reasons. You should also keep in mind that your chosen alternative needs to be realistically implementable; if there are significant obstacles, the solution may not be viable.

Ensure that you use decision criteria to select the most appropriate alternative. This involves understanding the concept of MECE—mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive. "Mutually exclusive" means that each idea or solution must belong to one category only, while "collectively exhaustive" implies that the categories cover the entire range of possible options. One of the videos in the tool section discusses MECE in more detail.

Your analysis should focus on the situation, the complications, and the questions you are asking. As you develop your solutions, the alternatives become the answers, each with key messages associated with them. Your analysis will support these key messages, helping to justify your chosen alternative based on the decision criteria.

Several important factors should guide your alternatives: they must be consistent with the organisation's mission, strategy, culture, and goals. They should also improve or maintain profitability, potentially increasing sales, market share, and ROI. Additionally, they need to uphold or enhance customer satisfaction and brand integrity.

Requirements for these alternatives include being feasible within current or future resources and capabilities, adhering to acceptable risk parameters, and having ease and speed of implementation. They should also aim to improve morale, safety, and turnover while retaining flexibility. Furthermore, in today's world, minimising environmental impact is essential.

For example, when purchasing clothing, your decision criteria could include brand, fit, price, or style. The criteria you select should be measurable, enabling comparisons, such as determining whether alternative A is more profitable than alternative B. Criteria must relate to the original problem statement and the alternatives; if they don’t, it indicates a poorly defined problem or other issues that need to be addressed. Ultimately, it’s vital to connect your proposals to the values and mission of the client organisation.

When presenting a solution, it’s essential to structure your information effectively. Start by clearly stating the recommended alternative at the top of your discussion. In a real-world scenario, you are expected to discuss the solution you are advocating rather than focusing on alternatives you are not recommending. Emphasise the strengths of your solution, explaining why it is the best choice.

To bolster your argument, address potential competitors' solutions, emphasising their shortcomings. Discrediting these alternatives can provide you with an advantage in a competitive setting. Discuss the negative impacts of the non-chosen alternatives, but be careful not to come off as overly negative—focus on facts rather than personal opinions.

Make sure your recommendation is clearly connected to the implementation of the selected alternative. It's important that your choice is logical and aligns with the decision criteria you’ve outlined. This clarity will help your audience understand your rationale.

Avoid recommending inappropriate alternatives, such as dismissing or firing individuals involved, as this can alienate your audience. Furthermore, steer clear of whimsical suggestions or the “do nothing” option; remember, you are there to provide a solution to the problem at hand. Your role is to offer proactive recommendations that address the challenges they are currently facing.