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MBA Mondays: Fork In the Road

The time has finally come.  You have a critical business decision to make.  You could choose one of two ways and from your seat, both ways look right.   Problem is, you can only pick one. What do you do?

Unfortunately, this comes up far too often. Many times you don’t even realize it.  But even when you do realize it, it still feels like its impossible to choose.

That’s because the two options are usually both compelling, even though they are completely different

In business, choosing one could mean changing your entire value proposition   When you get new feedback from users, do you use one name or do you change everything and go with the other? Do you choose to focus on the customer you had in mind or do you change to the other customer? How do you decide which one you care about more? Because you can’t see the end of the road from your seat.

In the legal world, lawyers face this same choice.  Choosing one strategy sometimes means you forego all opportunities to argue soemthing different.  Choosing to argue for theft and not robbery.  Homicide and not manslaughter.  Choosing to go to court rather than settle, even when a large settlement option sits right in front of you.

Once you see it and understand the choices, then comes the hard part: you have to take a stand.  You have to say, here is what I believe and I’m ready to risk it all to move forward. Even if people don’t agree. Even if I lose support. Even if I lose some of my customers. Even if I lose a few votes.

What fork in the road are you facing right now.  And what are you going to do?

**Full credit to Seth who talked a lot about the concept of forks in the road while we working on his new project a couple of weeks ago.