Strategic Doing

Chapter 1YOU ARE HERE

THE CHALLENGES WE FACE

Let's start with a thought experiment. Assume you and your partner are parents of two teenage children, one boy and one girl. You have two weeks in the summer to take a vacation. How do you plan it? There are two ways you could make the decision. Under Option A, you and your partner simply decide that you're going to the Grand Canyon for two weeks and that your children have no say in the matter. You've made your decision by carefully analyzing the facts about travel times and budgets. All that's left is to declare your intention and go.

Option B might be to convene a discussion with your family to explore options. Your son might want to go to Charlottesville, Virginia and Washington, DC because he's interested in learning more about Thomas Jefferson. Your daughter, on the other hand, has an interest in genealogy, and she wants to go to Cincinnati to visit her grandmother and learn more about the origins of your family. Your partner suggests a trip to Seattle, because none of you have ever gone to the Pacific Northwest. You would prefer a trip to Boston and Maine, where you could, among other things, introduce the family to the joys of eating a lobster. With all these options, how do you decide? Chances are, you'd convene a family conversation, or maybe several, to see if you could come up with a plan that is at least acceptable to everyone.

Nobel Prize winner Herbert Simon called this second approach satisficing, a combination of ...