This Focused Performance Weblog started life as a "business management blog" containing links and commentary related primarily to organizational effectiveness with a "Theory of Constraints" perspective, but is in the process of evolving towards primary content on interactive and mobile marketing. Think of it as about Focusing marketing messages for enhanced Performance. If you are on an archive page, current postings are found here.
Tuesday, July 05, 2005
Keep Your Options Open -- C. Keith writes about "process people" and "options people". While everyone has some of both in them, he does describe the tendencies of those who lean to one world view versus the other, and passes along some good advice...
To get 'process' people to consider options, repeat this phrase:
One choice is not a choice, it is a trap; two choices is not a choice, it is a dilemma; three choices is a choice.
(I believe I got that saying, perhaps worded slightly differently, from Jerry Weinberg.)
Repeat this saying often. Establish it as a process to follow to avoid traps and dilemmas.
One the other hand, there are two kinds of people in the world: those who split the world into two kinds of people, and those who don’t. Or the other two kinds of people: those who can count. Or the other two kinds of people: those who finish things.
Humor aside, the perception of choice is very much based in the assumptions that underlie the perceived limit of choice.
The phrase "I didn't have a choice," is another way of saying "I chose the lesser of two evils." But I certainly had a choice. Since we make such choices all the time, we have a term for them: Hobson's Choice. Hobson was a seventeenth-century livery stable owner who said to his customers, "You may either take the horse nearest the door or none at all." That's still a choice. If the horse nearest the door looks unridable, I can always walk.
This whole matter looms large in engineering design. All the time, designers want to throw up their hands and cry, "I know it'll be hard to lubricate, but I'm making it that way because I don't have a choice!" Design is life-in-microcosm -- always a complex set of constrained choices. Design is finding ways around being painted into corners. Options open up only when we refuse to accept what's obvious -- when we tell Mr. Hobson, "Fine, but I see you have a back door. Give me the fine mare next to it."
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