Idea 55: How to weigh up the options in decision making
If your enemy has two options open to him, be sure that he will choose the third.
Bismarck
It is invariably necessary to choose a particular course of action out of a range of possible options. What is the best way of ensuring that your own selection process is a sound one?
The basic point here is that you should never assume that there is only one option open to you. Consider a number of options (or as many sensible and pertinent ones as you can muster), many of which will be directly dictated or affected by the facts that you can establish. Gathering information also helps you to collect options, and even to consider options that you might think are closed to you (e.g. increasing price, ...
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