Concept

Candidate Question

One of the two or three decision questions left open after a diagnosis. The leadership team chooses which one becomes the one.

At the end of a diagnosis with the Compass, there are usually two or three candidate questions on the table. Each could be the one decision. Before one of them becomes the one, they are checked.

Three checks

Determine or decide? Whatever figures, a rule or experts can settle is not a candidate but an assignment. Case or rule? Where possible, decide not the individual case but how decisions will be made in future. Calculate or rule of thumb? If probabilities cannot be estimated, a rule of thumb, the smallest experiment and a review date help.

The choice

If two candidates remain, compare them in pairs: which one changes the mechanism that keeps the blockage in place? Which can the addressee really make? Which costs more if it is not made? The choice is a decision of the leadership team. The rejected question is documented anyway.

Go Deeper

Related Concepts

Decision Question

The one decision formulated as a question, so that someone can answer it with a commitment.

Undecidable questions

Questions that no calculation, rule or analysis can settle. Only these need a decision; everything else can be worked out.

The One Decision

The binding commitment that now opens the most room for the next decisions, made despite uncertainty, with a review date.

Blocking Pattern

A recurring interplay of symptom, tension axis and mechanism that blocks a decision. The book describes twelve of them.

Canvas

The working surface of the Compass: the WHY in the centre, the five other fields around it. Available as an A3 template.

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