Choosing between options

Which…?

You are being asked to pick one thing over another, and to say why.

Go deeper · the full lesson · 50 minutes · C1The Price of the PickOpen the lesson →

The lens

  1. What matters most here? Choose two or three criteria, and decide which comes first.
  2. How does each option do on those? One sentence per option. No spreadsheet.
  3. What do I give up with each? Every choice has a price. Name it.
  4. What would flip my choice? That is the condition you can say out loud.

It can lead to

  • A clear pick, with its price One option wins, and you say what it costs.
  • A conditional pick “A, unless…”, with the condition named.
  • Neither yet The real answer is an option nobody has put forward.

The thinking, step by step

A worked example

Which supplier would you choose: the cheaper one or the reliable one?

  1. What matters most: the cost of a late delivery, then price.
  2. Cheaper: lower price, a patchy delivery record. Reliable: higher price, almost never late.
  3. The price of choosing reliable: a few per cent more on every order.
  4. What would flip it: the cheaper supplier’s record improving.

How it might soundI’d choose the reliable supplier. A late delivery costs us more than the price difference, so I’m happy to pay a little extra for certainty. I’d reconsider if the cheaper supplier’s delivery record improved over the next year.

Where it breaks. When the options cannot be measured on one scale, a tidy table can hide the real disagreement.

Practise it

Thinking tools

Real cases

Talk it through

  1. Think of a recent choice between two good options. What mattered most, and did you say so out loud?
  2. In your own field, what is the price of choosing the reliable option over the cheap one?
  3. How do you decide when two people use different criteria for the same choice?
Then say it
Land itpoint · reason · stopPause ita beat, not an “um”Hold itfirm and calm