Page 158 - SKU-000506274_TEXT.indd

results are based. If you write that your new car must cost less than
$15,000 and then choose, or even consider the new BMW that means that
you simply were not serious or that you were doing some wildly creative
problem solving. How do I get the new BMW for less than fifteen grand? In
that case the decision is made. Good luck with the problem solving.

What are the “desirables” that you hope to experience?

n What benefits do you want to get from this decision?

n What problems do you hope to eliminate that are not covered by
your “musts”?

Having listed benefits and solutions give each a score between 1 and 10
so that the really important things are scored at or near to 10 and the “nice
to have”, but not really that important are scored close to or at 1. Be care-
ful not to score everything at 10. You are going to use this information, so
it needs to be your best assessment of your priorities and a listing built on
real value not wishful thinking.

What is the potential downside?

What are the problems, pitfalls or losses that any alternative may carry in
its wake? Again score these carefully. Give 10 to the most serious potential
drawback and 1 to the gnat’s bite that can readily be tolerated.

Now consider all the alternatives

Discard without further thought all that fail to deliver your “musts”. If you
have thought through your musts effectively then if the price is too high
you cannot afford it. If it is too big, too small, too old-fashioned, too tech-
nologically advanced, if your people cannot work it – whatever you decided
was essential must be deliverable from all the alternatives that you con-
sider in detail. Take what you have left and assuming that there is more
than one alternative remaining score each alternative on how well it satis-
fies your list of desirables. Quickly multiply the alternatives score for its
capability to deliver each desirable by its “desirability” score and add them
for each alternative. With luck you now have an alternative that is clearly
better than the others and which satisfies all your “musts”. Now that you
have one or more alternatives with scores that indicate that most of what
you want and all of what you need will be satisfied, you may wish to double
check by scoring each with the score that you gave to the possible pitfalls
to signify their seriousness multiplied by your best estimate of the chances
that the loss will occur. Add these and take from them the score of each
alternative that you have left. Now you should have a clear “winner” that
should give you all that you want and need with the minimum of draw-
backs.

Decisions, decisions 127