Even as a youth, I was told to consider my options when I was making an important decision.
My parents taught me to take a piece of paper, draw a line down the middle, and write down the “pros” on one side and the “cons” on the other.
This simple tool can be very effective.
Imagine we are considering opening an office for our business in Poland.
There are both risks (bad things that might happen and their effects) and opportunities (good things and their effects).
We fill in the table:
- The Pros might include additional revenue over the first year, with a springboard built for continued growth in Eastern Europe over the following years. We might also include the possibility of hiring additional talent in cybersecurity that could help us with some global challenges.
- The Cons could include risks related to cyber, trade compliance, ethics, reputation, and more.
But before we make a decision, we need to have more than a description of each of the Pros and Cons. We need some form of measurement.
We also need clarity on our overall objective: what we are trying to achieve. Let’s say that the overall objective is to increase enterprise revenue by 5% and that opening a new office in Poland is one option, one strategy we are considering.
We could add traditional measures of forecast revenue dollars for the…
