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Chapter 8: Alternatives Are Not a Buffet

Chapter 8: Alternatives Are Not a Buffet

Alternatives That Win MECE Options + Decision Criteria That Make Your Recommendation Obvious

A common mistake in case competitions is to create three or four random ideas and then select the one the team likes best. That isn't strategic decision-making. A strong alternative should emerge from the analysis. Your analysis has identified:

  • the problem;

  • the underlying causes;

  • the organisation's objectives;

  • its capabilities;

  • its constraints;

  • its opportunities;

  • and the risks it faces.

Your alternatives should respond to those findings. Think of the progression as: Analysis → Insights → Alternatives → Evaluation → Recommendation. The alternatives bridge understanding the problem and making the decision.

What Makes a Strong Alternative?

A strong alternative should be:

Realistic

The organisation could actually pursue it. It fits the organisation's:

  • resources;

  • market;

  • capabilities;

  • financial position;

  • regulatory environment;

  • and strategic situation.

Implementable

The organisation could execute it. You should be able to explain:

  • who would do it;

  • what resources are required;

  • what capabilities are needed;

  • how long it would take;

  • what major dependencies exist.

Meaningfully Different

The alternatives should represent genuinely different choices. Changing the wording of essentially the same strategy does not create three alternatives. For example:

  • Increase marketing by 10%;

  • Increase marketing by 15%;

  • Increase marketing by 20%.

These are different levels of the same decision, not necessarily three distinct strategic alternatives. Instead, consider alternatives such as: 

  • deepen the existing market;

  • enter a new market;

  • develop a new product;

  • pursue a partnership;

  • acquire an existing capability.

The alternatives create different strategic paths.

MECE Alternatives

A useful principle for developing alternatives is MECE: Mutually Exclusive and Collectively Exhaustive.

Mutually Exclusive

The alternatives should be meaningfully different from one another. If Alternative A and Alternative B could be combined without changing the strategic choice, they may not actually be separate alternatives.

Collectively Exhaustive

Together, the alternatives should cover the reasonable strategic choices available to the organisation. You don't need to identify every conceivable possibility. You need to identify the important and realistic choices.

Alternatives Should Come From the Analysis

Your alternatives should not appear out of nowhere. For example:

Analysis

The company has strong brand recognition but limited digital capabilities.

Insight

The organisation has an opportunity to grow digitally but lacks the internal capability to build the required platform quickly. This could lead to alternatives such as:

  • Alternative A: Build
    • Develop the capability internally.
  • Alternative B: Buy
    • Acquire an organisation that already possesses the capability.
  • Alternative C: Partner
    • Work with an external organisation to access the capability.

Now the alternatives emerge logically from the analysis. That makes the eventual recommendation easier to defend.

Don't Build a Straw Man

One of the worst habits in case competitions is creating:

  • one good idea;

  • one mediocre idea;

  • one obviously terrible idea.

Then the team announces: "Clearly, Option A wins." Of course it does, but this does not demonstrate strategic thinking. A straw-man alternative is intentionally weak so that the preferred option appears superior. Judges can often see this immediately. Strong alternatives should all be credible choices. Your recommendation should win because it is superior against meaningful criteria, not because the other options were designed to lose.

The Alternative Quality Test

Before evaluating your alternatives, ask:

  1. Is this realistic? Could the organisation actually do this?
  2. Is this implementable? Could the organisation execute it with available or attainable resources?
  3. Is it strategically relevant? Does it address the problem we identified?
  4. Is it meaningfully different? Does it represent a genuinely different strategic choice?
  5. Does our analysis support it? Can we explain where the alternative came from?
  6. Would a reasonable executive consider it? If management would never seriously consider the option, it probably does not belong in the final comparison.

Alternatives Are Choices, Not Ideas

There is an important distinction between an idea and an alternative. 

  • An idea might be to launch a social media campaign.
  • An alternative is broader: Invest in digital customer acquisition to rebuild the company's customer base.

The alternative describes a strategic choice. The social media campaign may then become one of the tactics used to execute that choice. This distinction matters because case competitions are usually asking: What should management do? not: What interesting idea could management try?

Discover Your MAD Skills Principle

Don't create alternatives to fill a slide. Create alternatives to create a real decision.

The purpose of alternatives is to make the choice meaningful.

The Bottom Line

Alternatives Are Not a Buffet
  • Alternatives should emerge from your analysis, not from a brainstorming exercise disconnected from the problem.
  • Each alternative should represent a credible strategic choice the organisation could realistically pursue.
  • Strong alternatives are:
    • realistic;
    • implementable;
    • meaningfully different;
    • connected to the problem;
    • supported by analysis.
  • Where appropriate, alternatives should be MECE: Mutually Exclusive and Collectively Exhaustive.
  • Do not create a straw-man alternative to make your preferred recommendation look stronger.
  • If one alternative is obviously ridiculous, comparing it adds little credibility to your decision.
  • Judges should see that the recommendation won against credible competition.

Your recommendation should win because it is the strongest choice, not because you deliberately created weak alternatives.

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