184 | Two Great Decision-Making Techniques for When You’re Stuck Between Two Options

Have you ever found yourself going round and round in circles trying to choose between two options?

Perhaps you’re deciding whether to recruit externally or promote someone internally, introduce a new policy or stick with what you already have, invest in a new HR system or make the current one work, or even stay in your current role or apply for something new.

Sometimes the problem isn’t that you haven’t thought hard enough about the two options. It’s that you’ve become so focused on them that you haven’t spotted another possibility.

In this solo episode of HR Coffee Time, Fay shares a real decision she recently struggled with while planning the 2027 edition of The Essential HR Planner, and how an unexpected suggestion helped her realise she had fallen into a common decision-making trap called narrow framing.

Drawing on ideas from Chip and Dan Heath’s brilliant book Decisive: How to Make Better Decisions, Fay explores two practical ways to widen your thinking and get unstuck when a decision feels like an either/or choice.

In This Episode, You’ll Learn

• What narrow framing is and how it can limit your decision-making
• Why the options in front of you may not be the only options available
• How to use theVanishing Options Testto uncover different possibilities
• Why asking someone else for their perspective can help you see what you’re missing
• The questions to ask other people so you don’t accidentally keep them trapped inside the same narrow frame
• How Fay used these ideas to solve her dilemma about whether to bring back the wire-bound version of The Essential HR Planner

Chapters

[00:00] Introduction: Stuck Between Two Options

[00:28] Common Either/Or Decisions at Work

[01:22] The Book: Decisive by Chip and Dan Heath

[02:43] Fay's Dilemma: The Essential HR Planner

[04:27] Should the Wire-Bound Planner Return?

[05:14] Asking for Feedback to Get Unstuck

[06:20] Claire's Game-Changing Suggestion

[07:53] Understanding Narrow Framing

[09:53] The Vanishing Options Test

[12:39] Getting Another Perspective

[13:50] How to Ask Better Questions When Asking for Advice

[14:44] Book Recommendations: Decisive, Made to Stick, and Switch

[15:28] Pre-Order the Wire-Bound Planner

[16:11] Closing Thanks and Sign-Off

Books Recommended

The book links below are Amazon affiliate links, which means I may earn a small commission if you buy through them, at no extra cost to you.

• Decisive: How to Make Better Decisions, by Chip Heath and Dan Heath
• Made to Stick: Why some ideas take hold and others come unstuck, by Chip Heath and Dan Heath
• Switch: How to change things when change is hard, by Chip Heath and Dan Heath

The Essential HR Planner

If you’re watching or listening to this episode close to its release date, you should now be able to pre-order the wire-bound 2027 edition of The Essential HR Planner.

Visit essentialhrplanner.co.uk to find out more and pre-order your copy.

Enjoyed This Episode? Don’t Miss the Next One!

Sign up for the free weekly HR Coffee Time email to be notified each time a new episode is released – and get free career tips, tools, and resources.