Creating Option C

There are different names for the thing I seek everyday: The Win-Win Solution, The Third Way, Synergy.

I call it Creative Option C: the option you have to create when Option A has merits but limitations and Option B has merits but limitations. You have to figure out how to get the best out of both - and delight the proponents of A and the proponents of B at the same time.

Easier said than done, right?

Well, actually, I have found that this way of going about things is easier, uses less resources in terms of both money and people, and has a greater chance of being realized than any other approach to problem solving I have yet discovered. Others have discovered the same thing.

There is more than one method of creating option C or developing the Win - Win. This is not just a high-falutin' theory of being nice and compromising often, there are actual steps to take. Many authors have described them. Here are some of my favorites:

• Lawrence Susskind and his colleagues at the Consensus Building Institute have written extensively. They have a terrific website and several easy to read books, including Breaking Robert's Rules of Order: The New Way to Run Your Meeting, Build Consensus and Get Results. This is a step by step guide to bringing all stakeholders together from the beginning of a project through final implemetation.
• The Harvard Negotiation Project has been churning out excellent material since 1981 when they published Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement without Giving In. Not everyone was born to be a hard-bitten negotiator. Here's practical advice for those who wish to occupy the world less confrontationally and still achieve great results.
• "Integrative Thinking" is the term coined by University of Toronto Professor Roger Martin who chronicles learnings from interviews with successful business leaders who don't panic when confronted with a "hard decision" or a "necessary trade-off" but instead seek to Create Option C. I spotted The Opposable Mind: How Successful Leaders Win Through Integrative Thinking on the bookshelf at Borders the other day, which pleased me, because when I first went looking for it, I had to order it from a bookseller in Canada.
• Another Canadian Author, Adam Kahane, has been employing the conflict resolution methods he describes in Solving Tough Problems: An Open Way of Talking, Listening, and Creating New Realities in projects around the world for decades. They didn't end apartheid in South Africa, or stop violence in Northern Ireland by picking between Option A and Option B. And that strategy won't bring peace to the Middle East or get anything built in downtown Port Clinton either.

Where-ever groups of people commit themselves to creating an option that works for everyone, focus on underlying interests rather than on positions, seek to build on commonalities, and above all, listen to each other without prejudice, magic happens. I love this process so much I named my business for it. Creative Option C, the consulting firm, is here to help your group or organization Create Option C, the Win-Win Solution, the Third Alternative.