ESSENTIALS MANAGEMENT For many complex decisions, it’s best to generate alternatives in a group setting with all of the Consulted people. “Get in a room, get on a whiteboard, and brainstorm,” says Rajaram. “For each alternative, list out the pros and cons, as well as the parameters behind the quantitative model. There are no shortcuts. Get into the numbers as much as possible. It can be very hard with ambiguous decisions to get down into the numbers, but it’s very valuable to do so.” Most importantly, if done right, this brainstorming exercise will also help generate new alternatives you might not have considered earlier. For example, he says, “When we were in partnership discussions with an important potential partner, the process got stuck around a speciifc clause. The decision we needed to make was how to move forward. We had two initial options — go ahead with the partnership as-is or terminate the discussions. When we got together to brainstorm alternatives, the group was able to generate a third compelling option — establish a contract with a third party which would mitigate our risk around this clause — that we had not previously considered. “The place where we see timely, quantitative evaluation done best is in M&A deals. Why? Because it’s a very important decision that’s potentially ‘make or break’ for the company,” he says. “Plus, most experienced corporate development professionals do an amazing job of evaluating the sell, buy, and partner scenarios along with the associated economic beneifts to the company over ifve years or ten years. They consider probability of success, resources invested and opportunity costs.” Employ the level of diligence, metrics and stakeholder engagement as you would for an M&A deal. If it’s a big decision, you’re actually merging your past and present. 38