The Tyranny of the Or

Many years ago I was preparing for a steering committee meeting. The main thing we were trying to get out of it was a decision on what direction that our project should take. I can't recall the project, the company, or the alternatives, but I can tell you with certainty that we failed. Presented with two alternatives, the steering committee had chosen them both.

"It's the beauty of the 'and' versus the tyranny of the 'or'," observed my boss.

His point was that "or" forces someone to make a decision. It forces them to evaluate multiple courses of action, to commit themselves, and to take responsibility for the outcome. It also forces them to accept the limitations of a situation.

How many people have you met that welcomed a decision like that?

By contrast, "and" is beautiful. Decision-makers get their cake AND the ability to eat it. They don't have to accept limitations in capabilities, resources, or physics. They don't have to disappoint anybody, and they don't have to be responsible for the outcome.

Management science writers have even enshrined that demanding "and" solutions is, in fact, a mark of genius:

"The genius of 'and' is to embrace both of the extremes at the same time. This is not just a question of balance. Balance implies 50-50, going to the mid-point. Visionary leaders did not seek the gray of balance, but were determined to be distinctly both A and B at the same time."

 - "Built to Last", Jim Collins and Jerry Porras

How many people have you met who wanted people to think they were visionary?

At some point, though, you have to make a decision, and far more decisions look like, "What would you like for breakfast?" than "How can we change the world?"

Often enough, I've found that steering committees hate "or" questions because, when they are asked to answer one, they feel like the project team hasn't done its job. They feel like the project team is shrinking away from hard work. If only the team had done its job - refined the choices a little bit more, explored the options in more detail - the steering committee wouldn't have to make a hard (and possibly unpopular) choice.

Since I'm more often on the project team than the steering committee, I tend to find that unfair. What's the steering committee for if not to make these difficult decisions?

However, it doesn't change the grim reality of the word "or". I've been working hard to stop using it, and not just in steering committee presentations.

So what's so bad about this strange little word?

First of all, it demands a decision. The respondent may be uncomfortable about having sufficient knowledge to make an informed decision. The respondent may also be uneasy, feeling that they are too far from the specifics of the situation, and they may also be cautious about diving into those details.

Second, it creates a closed question by implying limited options. Imagine asking someone on your team: "Is the next step to do X, or are you going to do Y?" You might add the "or" clause to the question, because it shows you're informed enough about the situation to know that Y is an option. You might also ask the question that way because you're trying to nail someone down to an explicit course of action, and don't want to let them off the hook with a completely open-ended question (i.e., "what's the next step?")

In doing so, though, you close the question - you eliminate room for problem-solving and creativity, or simply ideas that you're not aware of. If you leave off the "or" clause and ask, "Is the next step to take action X?", you still suggest that there's room for the answer to be, "Yes, step X, plus this one activity and without this other". Or they can say, "No, it's action Z", and action Z could be something you didn't think of at all.

You still need to approach your decision-makers with a finite set of options at some point. Otherwise you're wasting everyone's time. How is it possible, then, to balance the needs of decision makers against the need for a timely decision?

1.           Don't rush the decision. Present the information you have, but ask your stakeholders what information they need to make a decision. Maybe some of it will not truly be necessary (discuss that), but some of it will be worth the effort to obtain. Accept that a decision might take multiple meetings to achieve, but also make that clear to everyone involved.

2.           Anticipate concerns. Think of the questions you'll get asked, and get the answers before you're asked. What attributes of an alternative do you need to present? How much information will be sufficient to answer the questions you'll get?

3.           Try to find alternatives which represent points on a continuum, rather than stark choices. This is how you really get rid of the tyranny of the "or": instead of presenting two either/or choices, maybe you can present five alternatives that blend options together.

4.           Engage decision-makers in crafting alternatives. Get help with what's in the solutions, and how they'll be presented. With a caveat:

-             Don't engage all of your decision-makers. If you get your entire set of decision-makers together without doing your pre-work, you've just created a working session to solve the problem, and a solutioning session is likely to be even more annoying to your decision-makers than the tyranny of the 'or'. Engage a couple of your stakeholders to try out some alternatives, and reshape the decision process accordingly.

5.           Push for the decision only when lack of decision will soon have an impact. Throughout the process of making a big decision, it should be made explicit to everyone the deadline for the decision, and the consequence of not making one. You may also have to identify temporary decisions, trade-offs of cost or schedule that the project can sustain while a critical decision is being made.

6.           The points above are all generous and accommodating, but if you are the person driving for a solution, you still have to put guard rails on the process. You should push back against unnecessary delays in making a decision. Be responsive to requests for more information, but push back judiciously if you feel certain information doesn't differentiate enough between alternatives to help the process.

Getting a major decision made is a difficult task, and there's no real methodology for it. As with so much else, though, having a plan and guidelines are key. In the end, the goal is to make it easy for your