One Half Hour, One Whole Solution

The first thing you need to do is take a realistic—and honest—look at the time limitations you face. You can always find half an hour, and that's all you need to employ this streamlined, fast-forward technique for identifying options or choosing among them. (For an issue with many ramifications, you'll need additional time to employ the full technique.)

If you're starting from scratch, you'll use your half hour on Steps #1 through #4 to develop a powerful set of solutions. If you've already identified your options and gathered all the relevant information (which includes Step #5), you'll use your time on Steps #6 through #10 to bring your final choices to closure for implementation.

Thirty Minutes to Identifying Great Solutions

Lynne, the sales and marketing manager, used the quick-start version of Steps #1 through #4 to get the results she needed on a pressing marketing issue. One month into the quarter, sales of her newly launched graphics product lagged behind projections. She knew she had to boost sales fast. The deadline for placing an ad in a key publication was only two days away, and she was sweating under the pressure of deciding which ad to run.

Instead of letting the deadline drive her, Lynne took another tack. She asked herself if she was worrying about the time she had to make the decision or the time she needed to get long-term results. She reminded herself that her team had two months to boost quarterly sales, which was a lot longer than two days to decide about the next month's ad. With this realistic assessment, she was able to breathe a little easier, shift mental gears, and allow herself thirty minutes to better understand her team's choices.

Here's what she did.

Step #1: Enlist Everyone

Lynne asked the key people who understood the issue to come to a meeting. She invited the full team responsible for the new product and its sales, including product designers and sales and marketing people. She also e-mailed the field sales force, requesting input from distributors and prospective customers. "I know we're all jammed for time," she wrote, "but let's give ourselves a half hour tomorrow morning to get a grip on what's happening and how to respond."

Step #2: Discover Shared Hopes

Lynne asked all those present at the meeting to express their hopes in order to focus on the real objectives. Each of the seven attendees took about a minute to voice his or her hopes for the product and its sales. No one wasted time repeating ideas.

While the quarterly sales goal loomed before them, the team's hopes took a broader form. For example, the field sales representative said, "I hope we attract some quality customers who will create 'buzz' and word-of-mouth referrals that will help us draw more customers." Fulfilling this hope would build sales and sustainable profits. This perspective shifted the group's thinking from the urgency of the ad deadline to more fundamental objectives.

Step #3: Uncover the Real Issues

Next, Lynne invited each participant to state his or her thoughts and concerns in order to uncover the real issue. To make sure that everyone really listened, each person who spoke summarized what the previous person had said. This process of listening and reflecting, without debate or attempts to immediately solve the problem, took a couple of minutes per person.

The marketing assistant questioned the ad campaign. "Everyone is running ads," he said. "I'm concerned that more ads won't be effective with all the noise in the market. They may not attract the customers we want at this stage." Instead of defending the ad campaign, the person responsible for preparing ads reflected on what she heard. This step enabled the new perspective to sink in and helped the team refocus its efforts on different ways to build relationships with new customers.

Step #4. Identify All Options

Finally, Lynne asked the group to identify an array of options for pursuing the hopes expressed. Each person stated one new option for building client relationships. In ten minutes of structured brainstorming, the group developed several promising ideas. One was to gather testimonials from satisfied customers to attract additional ideal clients. The product engineers also offered to network with their professional colleagues to build credibility for the product and stimulate buzz for positive word-of-mouth referrals. A third idea involved sending e-mails to the field to identify target accounts. The group decided to develop all of the ideas and meet later that week to follow up on implementation.

By spending two-thirds of its brief meeting time focused on fundamental objectives, the group was able to understand the real issue it faced. Deciding about an ad in two days' time turned out not to be a high priority. Instead of making a hurried decision about the ad, Lynne took time to engage key people with a broader range of perspectives and took a better look at the basic objectives, the real issue, and fresh options. By employing the thirty-minute process, Lynne and her extended team embarked on a completely new path to turn their product sales around. And the best part was that they did it together.

Choosing an Option and Moving Forward

Sometimes groups can articulate their hopes, discover the real issue they face, and put options on the table, but they just can't decide what to do from there. They may avoid deciding because they don't know how to bring the issue to closure without lengthy and divisive debate.

For example, the board of directors of a statewide professional organization wrestled for years with the thorny decision about whether to take a stand on key legislative issues. Board members talked about the problem at length, but they never resolved it. Passions ran high and members feared it would take too much time to decide. More fundamentally, they worried that they might spend a lot of time and fail to achieve agreement among the thirty-three members—or, worse, that the contentious issue might split the membership.

The board began working with the ten-step process. In previous sessions, the members articulated their hopes, pinpointed the real issue, and brainstormed a list of options (Steps #1 through #4). They also had a good grasp of the relevant information (Step #5). Now, they needed to weigh the information and make a decision.

The next time the board met, the president addressed the group. "We've got one hour," she said. "We're going to use a new, fast method to reach a decision." (Generally small groups can decide on an option in thirty minutes, but larger groups like this one may need an hour—still a remarkably short time to get more than thirty people to make an effective decision together.)

Here's what the board did.

Step #6: Get Everything on the Table

The board members began by discussing the status quo option: not taking a position on legislative issues. Each member mentioned something negative about the option and, following Step #6 guidelines, refrained from repeating or commenting on each other's statements. This saved an enormous amount of time because the board had a history of members squaring off against one another in protracted debates. After all of the negatives about the status quo were brought forward, board members followed the same process to express the positives for that option.

Next, they considered the option of taking positions on key legislative issues. They used the same process to express the potential negatives and positives. Even the most argumentative members stayed on track and expressed views on both sides of the option.

After hearing all the pros and cons on the initial options, the members came up with a new alternative: targeting advocacy on a specific set of issues. (The emergence of new, inventive possibilities typifies the successful results this step yields.)

With thirty-three participants discussing three options, this step took about forty minutes. Everyone participated. All of the relevant information got a hearing.

Step #7: Write Down Choices That Support Your Shared Hopes

On secret ballots, board members wrote their first-choice option and other acceptable options that they felt best fulfilled their shared hopes for the organization. They appreciated that they could be entirely candid by using the secret ballot. With all of the information before them, members needed only a few moments of reflection to make and write down their choices.

Step #8: Map the Solutions

The tabulated ballot results showed twenty-eight members favored the newly introduced option of limited advocacy. The remaining five favored no advocacy role for the organization, but they also listed the limited advocacy option as an acceptable choice for the organization. The clarity of direction pleasantly surprised the group. They spent a few minutes discussing the limited advocacy option in order to satisfy the concerns of those who would have preferred no advocacy.

The tabulation and follow-up discussion took only ten minutes.

Step #9: Look Ahead

After the decision, the board assigned a small group to develop the details of the new legislative policy and a timetable for implementation. This rounded out the hour they had devoted to the issue.

Step #10: Stay Charged Up

As the president of the board commented afterward, "I'm amazed at what we accomplished. Although we had different perspectives, we agreed on a common course of action. It's a great relief to get this long-standing issue resolved."

As part of the celebration, two board members, who had been ardent adversaries in debates, tying up previous board meetings on a variety of other issues, linked arms for the group photograph at the end of the board meeting. The process not only improved the meeting dynamics but also transformed the working relationships among the board members. They accomplished something important together and had plenty of reason to celebrate.