| As
president of Ford Motor Co., Robert McNamara once briefly
pondered a decision made by one of his executives and
then asked him, "What did you decide not to do?"
It
wasn't that McNamara thought the executive had made
a poor decision – but how could he know for sure if
he didn't know what options had been rejected? McNamara,
as a wise and successful leader, wanted to be satisfied
that multiple options had been considered. He didn't
settle for the obvious decision, even if it looked good
on the surface. He wanted the best decision. Why is
it important to consider multiple options during the
decision making process? Here are three reasons:
1.
With options come possibilities.
Not
long after moving to the Atlanta area, I realized that
the drive from my home to the airport takes 35 minutes
- if I leave at 6:30 a.m. If I leave just 15 minutes
later, at 6:45 a.m., the same drive takes an hour. And
if I wait until 7 a.m., that same drive takes 80 minutes.
Driving
in Atlanta traffic has trained me to become a student
of the routes and time because they help define my options.
When I arrive somewhere early, sometimes I double back
and look for new ways to make the same trip. I want
to know my options. That way, when the obvious route
slows to a crawl, I know my options and I often come
up with a creative solution.
If
we don't have options or if we don't know our options,
we're stuck. We have little choice but to stay in the
traffic jam. In decision making, if we do not have options,
we only have one decision. And that decision may be
the wrong decision, or it may not be the best decision.
2.
With options come insights.
The
more options we have, the more we can see what is not
obvious to others. And people who are successful see
what is not obvious to others. They don't see what others
can't see; they just see what others don't seem to see.
Successful
people engage that creative part of their minds and
ask, "Well, I wonder how else I can look at this problem?
I wonder how else I could deal with this decision? I
wonder what other possibilities I have there?"
3.
With options come options.
Options
are a result of thinking early, often and differently.
And when we think early, often and differently, we begin
to create more options within our life. Options come
from the disciplines of pursuing options. And very often
they take us down roads we never would have traveled,
to places we never would have seen, where we find new
options we never would have considered.
Fred
Smith, a businessman in Texas who has been one of my
mentors, has a sign on his desk that says, "But on the
other hand..." He's an optional thinker, and he's taught
me to be an optional thinker, too. So when somebody
asks me to make a decision about a situation, I don't
offer a solution, I ask a question: What are our options?
Give me the good, give me the bad, give me the pretty,
give me the ugly, give me the impossible, give me the
possible, give me the convenient, give me the inconvenient.
Give me the options. All I want are options. And once
I have all the options before me, then I comfortably
and confidently make my decision.
John
C. Maxwell is an internationally-acclaimed author
and speaker on the subject of leadership. Learn more at http://www.johnmaxwell.com/. ©
Copyright 2001 by The Injoy Group. All rights reserved. |