Formalize organizational processes for widening options, exploring integrations, constructive debate, systematic analysis and clear decision-making. Systematize rigorous strategic choice evaluation practices.

Institutionalizing the Options Process

Once a choice is made through robust consideration, commit fully to the decision rather than second guess. Alignment and decisiveness in execution is key. Avoid analysis paralysis. Move forward decisively.

Committing Resolutely Once Choice is Made

Proactively brainstorm a wide diversity of possible options and alternatives so great choices emerge through considering breadth. Don't default to only the obvious ideas. Bring in outsider perspectives. Produce a large menu from which the best solution can emerge.

Generating Multiple Diverse Alternatives

Explore creative ways to integrate elements from multiple options into novel hybrid solutions. Break either/or thinking - new options emerge from synthesis. Build integrative rather than compromising hybrids.

Exploring Hybrids and Integrations

Rigorously track results, assess what is working well and what is not. Adjust tactics based on outcomes without changing strategy. Build evidence to refine subsequent choices. Insights emerge from doing.

Learning Iteratively from Results

Avoid framing strategic decisions too narrowly as binary either/or choices or accepted dilemmas. Explicitly push to expand the options and possibilities under consideration. This widens the decision frame and creates greater strategic freedom. Avoid false dichotomies. There are usually more than two routes.

Widening the Decision Frame Beyond Binary Choices

Thoroughly stress test the key assumptions underlying each option under consideration through rigorous debate playing devil's advocate. Make implicit assumptions explicit in order to seriously evaluate their validity and impact.

Reality Testing Key Assumptions

Great choices originate not in the decision point but in the process leading up to it.

Thoughtfully assess the pros/cons, risks, strategic impacts, and opportunity costs of the final options systematically before committing to a choice. Weigh through multiple lenses like financial, culture, operations.

Evaluating Options Systematically

In Creating Great Choices, Riel and Martin provide a framework for making wise strategic decisions by generating multiple options and carefully assessing them before committing to a final choice. They outline techniques to avoid narrow either/or thinking.

"The rarest of business books that teaches decision makers how to think, not what to think." - Malcolm Gladwell When it comes to our hardest choices, it can seem as though making trade-offs is inevitable. But what about those crucial times when accepting the obvious trade-off just isn't good enough? What do we do when the choices in front of us don't get us what we need? Rather than choosing the least worst option, Creating Great Choices offers a model that guides you towards a new and superior answer... integrative thinking. First introduced by world-renowned strategic thinker Roger Martin in The Opposable Mind, integrative thinking is an approach to problem solving that uses opposing ideas as the basis for innovation. Now, in Creating Great Choices, Martin and his longtime thinking partner Jennifer Riel vividly illustrate how integrative thinking works, and how to do it.The book includes fresh stories of successful integrative thinkers that will demystify the process of creative problem solving, as well as practical tools and exercises to help readers engage with the ideas. And it lays out the authors' four-step methodology for creating great choices, which can be applied in virtually any context. The result is a replicable, thoughtful approach to finding a "third and better way" to make important choices in the face of unacceptable trade‐offs.Insightful and instructive, Creating Great Choices blends storytelling, theory, and hands-on advice to help any leader or manager facing a tough choice.

JENNIFER RIEL

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