Decision-making Beyond “Right” and “Wrong”
How a Simple Pros and Cons List Can Become a Powerful Integrated Decision Plan
As teams, organizations, individuals, and families, we often find ourselves staring down big, daunting decisions. “Should we continue to build our B2B business, or make a strong pivot to B2C?” “Should we keep renting an apartment, or take out a mortgage and buy a house?” “Is our primary success metric for the next quarter going to be incremental revenue, or new user acquisition?”
In our desire to make the “right” decision, we often run the risk of seeing two complex and intersecting paths as all-or-nothing, right or wrong, good or bad. The false dilemma fallacy often leads us to believe that there is a single right choice and a single wrong choice. And once we’ve made that choice, confirmation bias often leads us to seek out information that reinforces this false dichotomy — and reassures us that the decision we made is, in fact, the “right” one.
While this approach might help us reassure ourselves and our colleagues, it also means that we are likely to miss out on critical opportunities. If pivoting to B2C was the “right” choice, what are we supposed to do if our B2B business continues to thrive? If renting an apartment was the “right” choice, what are we to do if an incredible house comes on the market for sale? How can we break out of all-or-nothing thinking without losing our focus?
In my work coaching executives and cross-functional teams, I’ve begun taking a different approach to making big decisions: outlining the pros and cons of multiple approaches, and then turning those pros and cons into an integrated decision plan. Here’s how to make one of your own.
Make a Simple Pros and Cons List
The first step is pretty straightforward: lay out your options, and do a quick pros / cons list for each one. You can find templates for simple pros / cons lists all over the place. Note that you can (and often should!) use a pros / cons list to evaluate more than two options — this is part of what breaks us out of binary thinking. For example, if you are choosing between focusing on revenue or user growth targets, you might list out the pros and cons of “focus on revenue,” “focus on user growth,” and “include both revenue and user growth as targets.”
Pick the Choice That Seems Best — Quickly!
Once you’ve created your pros / cons list, commit quickly to the option that seems best. Note that this is not a “one way door” decision — you can, and likely will, reevaluate your path forward based on the steps that follow. The idea here is not to pick the single best answer, but rather to provide yourself with a starting point for integrating your options. This approach better reflects the complexity of decision-making in the real world. And here’s where things get really interesting….
Make a Plan for Each “Pro” You Didn’t Choose, and Each “Con” You Did
Traditionally, this is where you’d be done — you’ve outlined our pros and cons, and made the best decision you can. But if you take a close look at the “pro”s you didn’t choose and the “con”s you did, you are likely to notice a number of critical, overlapping challenges and opportunities.
How can you integrate those challenges and opportunities into the path you have chosen? Go line by line through the pros of the options you didn’t choose and the cons of the option you did choose, and make a plan for addressing each one.
For example, if you chose to continue renting an apartment rather than buying a house, you may be wrestling with the con statement, “could miss out on a once-in-a-lifetime house if it comes on the market.” To address this con statement, you might build into your integrated plan, “get pre-approved for mortgage just in case.” Similarly, you may have missed out on the pro statement “diversify savings” from the option to buy a house. To address this unchosen pro statement, you might build into your integrated plan, “explore investment opportunities roughly equivalent to amount of down payment.”
Similarly, if you choose to pivot your business from B2B to B2C, you may have missed out on the pro statement “predictable revenue stream for next 1–2 years” from the option to stay focused on your B2B business. To address this unchosen pro statement, you might build into your integrated plan, “allocate small team to retain top 20 revenue-generating enterprise clients.” In the process of creating your integrated decision plan, you may very well find a new, unexpected path that brings together several options and gets you out of the “right choice” vs. “wrong choice” binary.
