Options & Recommendations

Set the criteria and weights before you look at the options, give the status quo and the alternatives a fair hearing, and lead with the recommendation so the reader meets it first.

Practice, not research: the weighted options table is a simplified form of multi-criteria decision analysis, a field with formal foundations (Keeney & Raiffa, 1993; Keeney, 2002); the simple version is only as good as its weights. Answer-first writing is consulting craft (Minto, 1981). The 1 to 5 scale and the number of options are rules of thumb.

Use it when:

• Analysis or research has produced insights, and there is more than one sensible way to act on them.
• Someone has already picked a favorite, and you want the comparison to be fair before the decision is made.
• You must take a recommendation to a decision maker who will ask "what else did you consider?"

Skip it when:

• The decision is already clear and you need to package one recommendation for a board or executive approval: use 8.13 SMART Recommendation Builder.
• You only need to compare a few entities on criteria, without a recommendation: use 2.13 Comparison Grid.

Two pieces of craft meet here, and neither comes with a guarantee. The weighted options table is the practitioner's shorthand for multi-criteria decision analysis, which has deep formal roots (Keeney and Raiffa, 1993). The shorthand inherits the logic but not the safeguards: the result depends on how the weights and scores were produced, and Keeney (2002) lists the mistakes people commonly make when trading values off. The ones this page guards against are the library's own reading, not a list from that paper: weights set without looking at how far the options actually differ, criteria that count the same thing twice, and scores nudged until the favorite wins.

Putting the answer first is consulting practice (Minto, 1981). No study shows that it gets recommendations approved more often; the craft logic is that a reader forms a view early, so the recommendation must be there to meet it. So Step 1 states the answer, Step 2 fixes weights before any option is scored, Step 3 demands honest pros for the status quo and honest cons for the favorite, and Step 5 gives every success metric a baseline, a target and a date.

Write the decision as a question, then your answer in two sentences: what you recommend and how confident you are. A busy reader should be able to stop here.

Strong answer: "Should we keep, change or drop the small-cafe route? Change it: test a smaller minimum order for cafes for three months, priced to cover the route. Medium confidence, based on interviews and order data."

The decision question:

Short answer (recommendation and confidence):

Illustrative example: the business, the roles and all numbers are made up.

The Gothenburg bakery from 2.1 has its insights (2.10) and must decide on the small-cafe route before April.

Step 1: "Keep, change or drop the cafe route? Change it, as a three-month test. Medium confidence."

Step 2: Route profit (5), keeping cafes (4), extra work (3), easy to reverse (2). The owner set the weights before seeing any scores.

Step 3: (1) Status quo: no extra work, but cafes keep leaving. (2) Half-crate minimum for cafes with a small route fee: keeps cafes, adds a Monday batch. (3) Drop the cafe route and serve hotels only: saves a route, but loses every cafe customer.

Step 4: Totals 38, 47 and 33 (illustrative). The head baker scored blind and also put Option 2 first, but closer to the status quo.

Step 5: Option 2, accepting an extra batch a week. Metrics: test cafes still ordering after three months, and route profit per month, both against last year's figures. First step: the sales lead offers the half crate to five cafes by 1 March.