Choices vs habits and their costs

[Yves Hanoulle]

Hi,

At a group I am working, they keep thinking that they don't have a choice.
What I understood so far, is that the fact that a choice comes with a
cost/container makes it no longer a choice .(for them)

I want to do a mini workshop / exercise about choices. What should I consider?



Scrambled by my Yphone

[ツ Sven Tiffe]

Olaf had a nice session about "real options" at the last p4a. I remember two parts: one was a short talk about the nature of options and that there are always options, the second one was an approach to develop an exercise based on a set of cards. You may want to reach out to him for details.

http://leanprocrastination.com/blog/2012/08/real-options-a-mindset/

http://eventifier.co/event/p4a13/tweets?q=realoptions

Cheers

Sven

2013/3/28 Yves Hanoulle <yv...@hanoulle.be>

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[Morgan Ahlström]

Hi Yves,

that's an interesting challenge. My spontaneous thoughts on the subject are four different angles to choices.

- Identifying different options

- Sunken cost

- Satir's "The problem is not the problem, coping is the problem."

- Self imposed restrictions

Going with the first could perhaps be some kind of challenge a'la Jerry's Rule of Three (or the Iroquois Rule of Six). I.e. coming up with different answers is part of understanding the problem. Might also work with something similar to a brainstorming workshop I described recently on my blog where we created random permutations of partial solutions to a problem. http://morgsterious.wordpress.com/2013/02/13/brainstorming-with-colonel-mustard/ 

Going with the second one could be something like the Dollar Auction described in the book Moral Calculations.

I'm still drawing a blank on the third one but I'm thinking about it. :-)

Going with the fourth one, I think any simulation with a time limit will bring out a lot of assumtions and limitations that people put upon themselves. I've actually found that if you only hint about time being a parameter, time limit is one of the restrictions people tend to infer themselves.

Don't know if any of this helps but good luck!

/Morgan

Written on my iPad

[Yves Hanoulle]

What I did:

A mini workshop:

I asked people to write down all the choices they made this morning, till the workshop
(one choice per post it)

(3 minutes)

Give one post it at the time and explain

next person gives on, a round teh table, one post at the time

At the end I gave them more choices they made:

- getting up

- going to work (yes it's a choice)

- getting dressed

- order of clothing to put on

- shaving or not

- brushing teeth or not

- ...

I also talked briefly about how some choices become habits and why that is good or bad

>> we want that taking care of our body is a habit: like we teach our children to brush their teeth in the hope they will create a habit.
>> Companies want that we buy their brand out of habit> cheaper to them
>> Some companies want we follow orders out of habit

>> Reacting to a fire in a company, should be a habit, to avoid ingured or deaths
....

Then I asked people about the costs of the choices (3 minutes)

At this point I realized I should have asked about the options, much more then the choices they had.

it's the options that have a cost

As this was an optional mini training during lunch and we started late (due to an emmergency this morning)
I was running out of time. (And peopel had now clearly stated their boundaries)

I decided to explain the rest 

- options also have a value
- options have an expiration date + time

- it's important to decide when to decide
- It's important (according to me) to keep as much options open as possible 
(clarified as "as much possible options") 
- some people prefer to decide as fast as possible. I don't. ;-)
- while you don't have to decide yet, gather info
- only commit when you must (or when you have a good reason to do so)

In retrospect a nice start for a new kind of workshop, as always it needs another iteration or 2 before it's great

Yves

2013/3/28 Yves Hanoulle <yv...@hanoulle.be>