Step 4: Identify all Options: See the Whole Tree before You Go Out on a Limb

Overview

The best way to have a good idea is to have lots of ideas.

—Linus Pauling

Before you evaluate particular solutions to a problem, you need to get all options out on the table. Unfortunately, many groups begin with too few options. Some make up their minds after considering only one idea.

Western culture values finding an answer and finding it quickly. We want to appear knowledgeable. People in positions of responsibility particularly fear appearing unprepared. They want to have answers and be able to justify why they are in charge.

Education and training don't necessarily overcome these primal urges. For example, in the medical field, some physicians order many fruitless medical tests and appear to follow a hit-or-miss treatment strategy. However, other physicians get to an accurate diagnosis and treatment plan more quickly and effectively.

In the late 1980s I led a venture investment team looking for opportunities to improve physician effectiveness. Our mission was to learn how we could boost the performance of the average physician to be more like that of the top 20 percent of physicians. If we could discover how to do that, we believed we could save billions of dollars from wasted diagnostic tests and ineffective treatments.

Our inquiries indicated that a substantial percentage of physicians made preliminary diagnoses of their patients within a few moments of meeting them. On that basis, they proceeded to order tests or initiate treatments to prove or disprove their initial assessment. When one route failed, they'd start down another. No wonder so many patients became frustrated and health care costs soared.

In contrast, top-performing physicians took time when they first met their patients to consider several alternative possibilities before pursuing tests or treatments for any one of them. Top-performing doctors didn't necessarily have more knowledge or training. Instead, they had a process to consider multiple options before pursuing costly and time-consuming courses of action.

To be a good doctor in your business, you need to identify a full set of choices before you launch into a solution. Choices give you strength because they free you from being locked into the boxes of conventional thought.