You will be able to avoid whether-or-not decisions by generating more options.
Hafiz has been asking himself the same question for three months: should I do a part-time MBA or not? He has the brochure, a rough idea of the fees and a colleague who says it changed her career. He also has a young child and a job that already eats his evenings. Every time he thinks about it, he goes back and forth between yes and no, and nothing gets decided.
The problem may not be the answer. It may be the question. "Should I do this or not?" offers exactly two options, and when two options are both unappealing, people tend to stall or pick the one that hurts least in the moment. This lesson is about getting more options on the table before choosing.
In their book Decisive, Chip and Dan Heath call this problem narrow framing: defining a decision too tightly, usually as a yes-or-no choice about one option. "Should we hire a new person or not?" "Should I take this job offer or not?" "Should we launch the product in March or not?"
Framed like that, the decision hides every other path. Hafiz is not really choosing between an MBA and nothing. His actual goal is probably something like moving from operations into a more senior general management role in the next few years. An MBA is one route to that. There are others he has not considered, because the question never asked him to.
Narrow framing is the personal version of the false dilemma from lesson 2.1, Attacking the person, the straw man and the false choice. In that lesson someone else offered you two options. Here, you are the one doing it to yourself. The Heaths suggest that whenever you catch yourself facing a whether-or-not decision, you treat it as a signal to look for more options.
The first question that widens a narrow frame is about opportunity cost: what else could I do with the same money or time?
Hafiz writes down the rough cost of the MBA in fees and evenings over two years. Then he asks what else that money and time could buy towards his real goal. A shorter executive course in general management. A certification in finance for non-finance managers, which is the gap his boss has mentioned. A move to a stretch role inside the company, managing a second function, which would cost no fees and build exactly the experience he needs. A mentor in a senior role. If he is eligible, funding for some courses through SkillsFuture, with the current amounts and rules checked on the SkillsFuture website.
Each of these is a real option, and several can be combined. Suddenly the decision is not yes or no but which mix gets him closest to the goal for the least cost.
At work, the same question opens up most spending decisions. "Should we buy this software?" becomes "what else could the same budget do for the problem it is meant to solve?" Perhaps a process change, a part-time hire or a cheaper tool would do most of the job.
The second question is one the Heaths call the vanishing options test. Imagine that none of the options you are currently considering were available. What would you do then?
It sounds odd, but it forces your mind to search for new paths instead of going round the same two. If Hafiz could not do an MBA and could not stay where he is, how would he get to general management? His answer is that he would ask his boss directly what it would take, and look at operations roles in larger companies that come with a clear route to general management. Neither had occurred to him while he was stuck on the MBA question.
For a team, the same test works well in a meeting. "Say the vendor we are considering went out of business tomorrow. What would we do?" The answers often include an option better than the one on the table.
Once you have more options, you often do not need to choose between them in one go. The Heaths recommend testing assumptions with small experiments before a big commitment. They have an informal word for it, "ooching": taking a small step into a decision to see what happens.
Hafiz could sit in on an MBA class or take one short module before enrolling. He could ask to lead one cross-functional project for three months to see whether general management suits him. Each test is cheap, quick and reversible. Each gives him real information instead of more back and forth.
This connects to lesson 6.1, One-way doors and two-way doors. A small trial is one of the best ways to turn a one-way door into a series of two-way doors, so you only commit fully once you know more.
By the end of an hour with a notebook, Hafiz has six options rather than two. He decides to ask for the stretch role and take a short finance course this year, and to revisit the MBA in eighteen months with real experience to judge it against.
You probably have a yes-or-no question of your own that has been going round in your head. Bring it to the activity below, where you will widen it before you choose.
Take one yes-or-no decision you are facing and write at least four alternative options before choosing.
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