CREATING STRATEGIC OPTIONS

“You and I are essentially infinite choice-makers. In every moment of our existence, we are in that field of all possibilities where we have access to an infinity of choices.”

– Deepak Chopra, Holistic Health Guru

Strategic leaders forge their organization’s future through the options they create and their decisions. Creating compelling options is one of the most neglected phases of strategy and is hard work, necessitating a combination of external orientation, internal insight, creativity, passion, and discipline. If there is one skill that strategic leaders excel at, it is in creating compelling options for a problem or opportunity. The quality of options is the limiting factor in the potential growth of a business. The right options can improve a company’s potential, while the status quo or limited and narrow options can constrain the potential.

Robust options come from the difficult work of figuring out the next hyper-growth markets and customer segments, the blockbuster innovations in products and services, the brilliant marketing campaign that drives massive awareness, the step function drivers in the efficiency and effectiveness of the organization, and all of those thousands of incremental options that fuel continuous improvement. The suitable options emerge from stretching the imagination, engaging debates, analyzing every angle, connecting the dots, innovating, employing analogies, understanding best practices, collaborative problem solving, leveraging strengths, and mapping out the potential options.
Here are the top tools and concepts to create winning options:

1. Emergence
2. Innovation
3. Analogy
4. Best Practices
4. Brainstorming
6. Voice of the Customer

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