We all ultimately want to find the strategy that is best for our business. Rather than asking individuals to find that answer for themselves and then fight it out, this approach enables the team to uncover the strongest option together. A standard process is characterized by arguments about what is true. By turning instead to exploring what would have to be true, teams go from battling one another to working together to explore ideas. Rather than attempting to bury real disagreements, this approach surfaces differences and resolves them, resulting in more-robust strategies and stronger commitment to them.

1. Specify Conditions

Once a diverse set of possibilities is established, the team then needs to reverse engineer the logic of each possibility. That is, it needs to specify what must be true for the possibility to be a terrific choice. Notice, this step is decidedly not for arguing about what is true, but rather for laying out the logic of what would have to be true for the group to collectively commit to a choice...

This process is a form of reverse engineering because the starting point is the (tentative) assumption that the conclusion is valid—namely, that this is a great possibility. The team then works to understand the conditions under which that assumption is correct. It works backward to declare the various conditions that would have to hold for this to be a great possibility. Figure 8-3 shows the logic flow of this reverse-engineering exercise. In each of the seven boxes, you can list what would have to be true along that dimension for the option in question to be valid.

1. Design Valid Tests

Once key barrier conditions are identified, they must be tested in ways the entire group will find compelling. A test may involve surveying a thousand consumers or speaking to only one supplier. It may entail crunching thousands of numbers or doing a purely qualitative assessment...

At this point, the critical issue is whether the decision-making group regards the test as valid. In this sense, the most skeptical member of the team is the most valuable. Typically, this person will have the highest standard of proof for any test, and building his or her commitment to the choice will be the most challenging. However, without his or her commitment, any consensus will inevitably be false. Hence, the most effective approach to overcoming barriers is to put the test design for each barrier condition in the hands of that condition’s greatest skeptic. If that person is satisfied that a test is rigorous and that the standard of proof has been passed, then everybody else—who is by definition less skeptical—will also be satisfied that the test is legitimate and stringent.

That, in sum, is the process for choosing between possibilities for where to play and how to win. First, frame a choice. Second, explore possibilities to broaden the set of mutually exclusive possibilities. Third, for each possibility, ask, what would have to be true for this to be a great idea, using the logic flow framework to structure your thinking. Fourth, determine which of the conditions is the least likely to actually hold true. Fifth, design tests against those crucial barriers to choice. Six, conduct tests. Finally, in light of the outcome of the tests and how those outcomes stack up against predetermined standards of proof, select the best strategic choice possibility. This process broadens the possibilities up front and then systematically narrows the field. It leverages different perspectives to enrich the discussion, rather than bogging it down.

“REVERSE-ENGINEERING DOS AND DON’TS

• Don’t spend a lot of time up front analyzing everything you can; instead, use reverse

engineering to pinpoint only what you really need to know.

• Do frame a clear and important choice up front; make it real and significant.

• Do explore a wide range of where-to-play and how-to-win possibilities, rather than narrowing the list early on to those that feel realistic; unexpected possibilities often have interesting and helpful elements that can otherwise be dismissed out of hand. Learn from them.

• Do stay focused on the most important question (what would have to be true for this to be a winning possibility?), listing the conditions under which this possibility would be a really good one.

• Don’t forget to go back and eliminate any nice-to-have conditions; every condition should be truly binding—if it weren’t true, you wouldn’t pursue the possibility.

• Do encourage skeptics to express concerns at the specify-barriers stage; have them articulate the precise nature of their concerns about specific conditions.

• Don’t have proponents of a given possibility set and perform the tests; ask the

skeptics to do it. If the skeptics are satisfied in the end, everyone else will be too.

• Do test the biggest barrier first. Start with the condition the group feels is least likely to be true. If it isn’t true, the conditions required do not hold and you can stop testing.

• Do use a facilitator to run the reverse-engineering process; it helps to have someone to attend to process and group dynamics as you work through the thinking tasks.