Strategic Options Evaluation

---
name: strategic-options-evaluation
description: "Compares strategic options, including \"do nothing\", on a fixed set of dimensions (impact, effort, risk, reversibility, resource fit), scored independently per option and plotted on at least two views rather than collapsed into one number. Use when a decision needs a legible trade-off comparison instead of the most persuasively argued option winning by default."
---

# Strategic Options Evaluation

## Purpose

Compares strategic options in a structured way — impact, effort, risk, and
resource fit — so a decision is made against a consistent set of criteria
instead of whichever option was argued for most persuasively.

## Anchored in research

- McKinsey — structured problem solving
- Liedtka (1998) — intelligent opportunism: staying alert to good options that
  emerge outside the original plan, and evaluating them with the same rigor
  as the options that were planned for.

## Method

1. **List the real options, including "do nothing."** An evaluation with only
   one live option isn't a comparison — make sure at least one genuine
   alternative, including the status quo, is on the table.
2. **Fix a small, consistent set of comparison dimensions before scoring any
   option** — typically impact, effort/cost, risk, reversibility, and
   resource/capability fit. Deciding the dimensions after seeing the options
   invites motivated reasoning toward a preferred one.
3. **Score each option on each dimension independently.** Resist collapsing
   straight to a single overall ranking before the dimension-level picture is
   visible — a lot of the useful information is in *where* options diverge,
   not just which one wins on average.
4. **Plot the options on at least two views** (e.g. impact vs. effort, and
   impact vs. risk) rather than relying on a single composite score — a
   single number hides trade-offs a decision-maker needs to see.
5. **Separate reversible from irreversible options explicitly.** A
   high-impact but reversible option (a pilot, a limited rollout) can
   reasonably beat a similarly-scored irreversible one, even at the same
   "impact" score — reversibility changes the real risk, not just the
   variance.
6. **Produce a decision-ready comparison, not a recommendation disguised as
   analysis** — the output should make the trade-offs legible enough that a
   different, reasonable person could look at the same table and pick
   differently for defensible reasons.

## What this skill does NOT do

- Doesn't make the final decision for you — it produces a structured draft to
  support a human decision.
- Doesn't confirm figures, market data, or competitor data from memory — it
  uses the inputs you provide, or marks an assumption clearly
  (`[assumption — verify]`).
- Doesn't make the final choice for you — it structures the options into
  decision-ready, comparable material.

## Refinement notes

Areas to keep deepening with real practice:

- your own rules of thumb and heuristics for this technique
- concrete templates (into [`../../references/`](../../references/))
- reference cases / your own examples
- what this skill deliberately does *not* do (guardrails, common mistakes) —
  add to the list above

This is an internal working note, not a claim about the skill's current
usability. Track depth privately via the `maturity` field in
`skills_index.json` (see
[`../../../meta/maturity_levels.md`](../../../meta/maturity_levels.md)).
**Don't add new fields to the frontmatter** — `name` and `description` are
the only ones allowed (see
[`../../../meta/frontmatter_schema.md`](../../../meta/frontmatter_schema.md)).

## Continue from here

- Once this step is done, move to [`../../../opportunity-recognition/skills/market-and-signal-scanning/SKILL.md`](../../../opportunity-recognition/skills/market-and-signal-scanning/SKILL.md)
- A ready-made skill chain for this situation: see [`../../../playbooks/`](../../../playbooks/)
- This pack's shared guardrails: [`../../CLAUDE.md`](../../CLAUDE.md)

## References

- [`../../references/`](../../references/) — the pack's shared background material
- [`../../CLAUDE.md`](../../CLAUDE.md) — the pack's shared guardrails