by Peter A. Arthur-Smith, Leadership Solutions, Inc.®

“Strategic Clarity is the combination of a compelling vision and astute, timely decision making”

It’s amazing how hindsight works. Looking back on the above topic title, this writer felt compelled to change the original word “workplace” into its current substitutes of “venture/team.” That changes the focus from being fixated on one’s own job situation and instead concentrating on one’s team or overall venture. That’s much more applicable for anyone in leadership. Accordingly, what are your venture/ team’s options for the New Year looking like? 

Now we can re-introduce enlightened leadership’s more optimistic option solving (OS) mode, instead of resorting to our more pessimistic mode of problem solving…Can you hear the mental groans when the words problem solving come up? Is that because we’re challenged to stop and think or because we’re afraid our possibilities are not looking so great? This writer stumbled across the OS mode, when trying to change the direction of a typical client problem solving discussion a number of years ago, and the conversation got rather bogged-down – largely because the client was particularly pessimistic about a positive outcome.  By switching to option solving, the tenor of the conversation changed into a more optimistic tone almost immediately.

Take Christine for example: she has nicely got her e-commerce advisory venture off the ground over the past year. The question is: what direction should she pursue over the forthcoming year to sustain momentum and build a thriving advisory business?  Now she can turn to the aid of option solving (OS) to draw upon her enormous intuitive powers. Take a look at the above pictograph: especially as our intuition, at its best, relies on pictures. It can absorb pictures at phenomenal speeds…11 million pixels per second…rather like your digital camera, which also frames pictures at 11 million pixels per second. Can you comprehend that speed?

With OS, Christine has to initially pose a rational question (Q). We are constantly posing our intuition questions and it loves to respond with optimum answers… rather like Siri on your cell phone!  In fact, believe it or not, your intuition makes pretty well all your judgmental decisions, because your rational mind finds it impossible to discern between black or white or whether people are being truthful or deviant. You rely upon your enormously powerful intuition to make such calls. A rational Q switches your intuition into high gear.

Christine’s Q turned out to be: “What is my optimum strategic option for 2022; considering 1) organiz-ations are clamoring to discern their best e-commerce approach, 2) there’s a desperate shortage of e-commerce know-how among executives, 3) it’s unclear how much they’re willing to pay for such advice, and 4) there’s a limited time-window before e-commerce advisory services become fiercely competitive?” (NOTE: Christine kept it to four considerations to obviate making her decision-making options too complex.)

Once Christine posed this key, rational question; her highly active intuitive mind was already chomping-at-the-bit to present a solution. However, if she doesn’t use the right framework, her incredible intuitive powers will likely flail around without some sort of discipline. Hence the above pictograph framework will help her to do that. (NOTE: As we all know, our intuitive mind can work on several levels at once – thinking about this moment, later today, tomorrow’s possibilities, and what might happen next week – unless we capture its attention in the right way.)

Consequently, Christine aimed to focus it via two yin and yang “bookends,” which offer outlier possibilities and cause her intuition to push them away. At the “yin” end was: Revert to traditional advertising – at the “yang” end was: Use AI to make all strategic decisions. Her intuition quickly sidelined both of these. At the same time, her innate capabilities will start figuring out more realistic options (A-F) in between. These could include: A – Data mining & Data Warehousing; B – Social media marketing; C – Digital marketing analysis; D – Brand marketing; E – Content marketing; and F) – Digital advertising. OS requires a minimum of five options to draw out creative alternatives. It increases the chances of you hitting-on an optimum rather than our usual either/or solutions. With the latter either/or, there’s always 50% chance you will be wrong, as well.

Take the example of President Bill Clinton around 30 years ago: Should the USA allow China to join the World Trade Organization (WTO) or keep it at bay? He decided to let it join the WTO and it’s now poised to become the next super power. Perhaps, if it had been kept out, it would still be an emerging economy. By using option solving, Clinton and his team could have utilized five nuanced options: for example, another three could have been 1) give China a five year trial run as a member, 2) require China to reveal its membership agenda, and 3) offer it a three stage membership mode to observe its behavior. Add these to his prior two options and it would’ve given Clinton the five minimum. In Christine’s case, she decided to extend hers to six.

Once her question, bookends and six options were in place, she decided to sleep on them – for emotional distancing purposes – and then revisit her OS paradigm as soon as she awoke the next morning. At that instant, her intuition, which had subconsciously mulled over her entire pictograph overnight, strongly indicated her optimum option. It was important, despite whatever her choice happened to be, that Christine follow her intuitive instincts. It would prove to be self-defeating to second-guess her intuitive choice. (NOTE: How many times have you gone against your initial gut instinct and discovered that your second choice was flawed?)

Now she had strategic clarity regarding her 2022 focus. It’s highly unlikely that she will regret her stance and she can now move forward with confidence. Her next move was to put her 2022 journey together and pinpoint the most likely milestones she would need to pass to remain on track. This is better than fixating on goals, which encourage a stop-start approach to getting things accomplished. Of course, better still would be pulling a team together to produce the question, book ends and options: followed by some emotional distancing before calling upon its “wisdom of the crowd” to make an optimum option call. A team mode is the most effective approach, because you now also have everyone committed to your/their final option, as well.

It’s also a great tool to use with customers/clients, since it can help them flush out their optimum options, too. You will find them respond very positively to such a possibility, as this writer did all those years ago!

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Author, Peter A. Arthur-Smith, Founding Principal with Leadership Solutions, Inc., is based in New York, and author of Smart Decisions: Goodbye Problems, Hello Options. He has drafted a potential new publication, People Count more than Numbers: Enlightened Leadership Re-visited that offers a slew of fresh leadership concepts and practical models. Feel free to follow author at: Linkedin.com/in/peter-arthur-smith-2115722/

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