Options and Criteria
Write down what a good answer would have to do before you look at the answers, then say honestly what each one costs.
Best for a Decision, an Opportunity · Franklin, 1772; Kepner and Tregoe, 1965 · takes half an hour
How to run it
- Write the choice: what is being chosen, by when, and what is not on the table. Name the decision, not the outcome you are hoping for.
- Before listing any option, write the criteria. For each, say whether an option must meet it or you would merely like it to, and how you would tell. Check that no two measure the same thing; if they overlap, say which one owns it.
- Only now list the options. At least three, and one of them is doing nothing. Deferring counts, if you say what you are waiting for.
- Strike out any option that fails a must, whatever else it does.
- For each survivor, say what it wins on, naming the criteria rather than qualities, and what it costs. No totals. Every option gives something up.
- Make the call: one option, why it over the runner-up, and what would reverse it. Writing down what would change your mind now is what lets you change it later without a fight.
Where it falls down. The classic weighted grid can be tuned until the favourite wins, and everyone who has used one has done it at least once.
With a pen
The choiceWhat is being chosen, by when, what is not on the table
What a good answer must do, written firstEach: must, or would like? How you’d tell. Overlaps another?
The options, one of them doing nothingEach: wins on which criteria / what it costs / fails a must?
The callWhich. Why over the runner-up. What would reverse it