Most business owners believe they have weighed their options for the future. Usually they have weighed one, and sometimes two. Decision researcher Paul Nutt studied 168 organizational decisions and found that only 29% considered more than one alternative, as Chip and Dan Heath report in Decisive. A classic Harvard Business Review article by John Hammond, Ralph Keeney and Howard Raiffa explains one reason: the status-quo trap pulls decision makers toward whatever is already in place. This article looks at the options owners leave off the list without ever rejecting them, uses John Warrillow's Built to Sell to show why the most overlooked option, keeping ownership while someone else runs the daily work, depends on how the business is built, and applies the first question of The Succession Filter™: is the business Ready to run without you?
Introduction
There is a difference between an option you considered and turned down and an option that never occurred to you. The first is a decision. The second is a gap you do not know is there.
I once owned a business that could have run without me. The people were trained, the systems were written and followed, and the work did not depend on my being in the room. When the time came to move on, I sold it. Keeping it and letting someone else run the day never crossed my mind. I did not weigh that option and reject it. It simply never made the list.
Last week we looked at the six broad ways an owner can leave. This week the question is narrower and more personal: which of those options never made it onto your list, and why?
Key Takeaways
• An option you never considered is different from one you rejected, and it is far more common.
• Decision research suggests most organizations weigh only one alternative for important decisions.
• The status-quo trap makes whatever already exists feel like the only reasonable choice.
• Keeping ownership while someone else runs the daily work is the option owners overlook most, and it is only open if the business can run without you.
• The Ready question of The Succession Filter™ tells you whether that option is real for you today.
Most Decisions Weigh One Option
Paul Nutt, a professor at Ohio State University, spent much of his career studying how organizations make important decisions. In one study of 168 decisions, he found that only 29% of them considered more than one alternative. Chip and Dan Heath, who report the finding in their book Decisive, call this narrow framing: treating a choice as "whether or not" when there are several other paths available.
For an owner thinking about the future, narrow framing usually sounds like this: should I sell, or not yet? That framing hides every option that is neither selling nor staying exactly as you are. It hides bringing in a partner, building a management team, sharing ownership with employees, and keeping the business while someone else runs the daily work.
The Heaths' advice is simple, and I think it is right. When you catch yourself asking whether or not to do something, treat it as a signal to stop and find one more option before you decide.
The Pull of What Already Exists
John Hammond, Ralph Keeney and Howard Raiffa described eight psychological traps in decision making in a Harvard Business Review article first published in 1998, and one of them explains a lot about owners. They call it the status-quo trap: a bias toward keeping things as they are, even when better alternatives exist.
For an owner, the status quo is usually the owner. You have always been the one who opens, closes, decides, fixes, and signs. So when you picture the business without you, the picture defaults to the only alternative you can see clearly, which is someone else buying it. The idea that it could keep running, with you still owning it and someone else doing the job you do now, does not fit the picture of how things have always worked, so it rarely gets drawn.
Hammond, Keeney and Raiffa also describe a framing trap, where the way a problem is first stated shapes every answer that follows. "Should I sell?" is a framing. "What do I want this business to do for me over the next ten years?" is a different one, and it produces a different list.
The Option Owners Overlook Most
John Warrillow's Built to Sell is a short business story about an owner who discovers that his company is close to worthless to a buyer, because it depends on him. His argument is that a business can only be sold, or stepped back from, if what it does can be delivered without the owner. He offers three tests for that kind of business: the work is teachable, so other people can be trained to do it; it is valuable, because the business does something specific very well; and it is repeatable, because customers need it again and again.
Those three tests matter well beyond selling. They decide whether you have a fourth option at all: keeping the business and stepping out of the daily work. A business that passes them can be owned without being operated by its owner. A business that fails them gives you a much shorter list, because the only person who can run it is you.
This is why the overlooked option is so often overlooked. Owners who never built for independence never have the option, so they never think about it. Owners like me, who did build for it, can still miss it, because the habit of being the person in charge is stronger than the systems they put in place.
What I Did Not See
In my own case, the systems were there. I had built them over years. They were mandatory, they were tied to the mission and values of the business, and the people I hired were trained to them and paid well for following and improving them. By every practical measure, the business was Ready.
What was missing was the idea. Owning without operating was simply not something I pictured for myself. I made a careful decision about who I would never sell to, and I held to it. I never made any decision about keeping it, because the option never came up.
I share that because it is the most useful thing I can tell another owner about this week's question. The options you are most likely to miss are not the ones you lack the means for. They are the ones that do not match the picture you have of yourself.
Building a Longer List
Here is a practical way to widen the list.
1. Write your current answer to the question "What happens to this business when I step away?" in one sentence.
2. Ask what that sentence assumes. Most answers assume the owner either stays or sells.
3. For each of the six ways out from last week, write one sentence on what would have to be true for that option to work.
4. Circle any option you have never discussed with anyone. Those are the ones narrow framing has hidden.
5. For each circled option, ask whether the business would pass Warrillow's three tests if you were not there.
You do not have to choose today. When you do, you will be choosing among real alternatives.
Where the Ready Question Comes In
The first question of The Succession Filter™ is Ready: could this operate without me, and have I ever tested it? It sounds like a question about systems. In practice, it is also a question about options, because every option except closing the doors depends on the answer.
If the answer is yes, your list is long: sale, internal buyout, family, shared ownership, or ownership without the daily work. If the answer is no, the list shrinks, and the options that remain tend to be the ones decided by someone else's timeline.
What This Means in Your Practice
In a dental practice, narrow framing usually sounds like "Should I sell to a DSO or not?" That question hides the associate who could buy in over five years, the partner who could share the load, and the option of owning the practice while someone else carries the clinical schedule.
The status quo has a dental shape too. If you are the dentist who sees the most complex cases, holds the relationships with your specialists, and approves every scheduling exception, the practice is built around your chair. Warrillow's three tests translate directly:
• Teachable: could an associate deliver your standard of care, from the exam to the treatment conversation, if your protocols were written down and trained?
• Valuable: is the practice known for something specific that patients and referring dentists seek out?
• Repeatable: do patients return for hygiene and ongoing care, so their relationship is with the practice and not only with you?
If the honest answer to any of these is no, that is not a verdict on your practice. It is a list of what to build next.
Final Thoughts
I made one careful decision about my business and missed another entirely. The careful one was about who I would never hand it to. The one I missed was whether I needed to hand it to anyone at all.
This week, find the option you never put on your list. It may still not be the right one, but you should be the person who decides that.
Book Your Free Practice Efficiency Call
If you are not sure whether your business would pass the teachable, valuable, and repeatable tests without you, that is a good conversation to have before you decide anything. A free 30-minute Practice Efficiency Call will show you where the business depends on you and where it is losing time or money. https://calendly.com/drmjhanlon/the-hanlon-group-consultation
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Treating a decision as "whether or not," such as whether or not to sell, instead of comparing several alternatives. Chip and Dan Heath report Paul Nutt's finding that only 29% of the 168 organizational decisions he studied considered more than one option.
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One of the decision traps John Hammond, Ralph Keeney and Howard Raiffa described in Harvard Business Review: a bias toward keeping the current situation even when better alternatives exist. For owners, it often means picturing only two futures, staying or selling.
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Yes, if the business can operate without the owner. John Warrillow's tests are useful here: the work has to be teachable, valuable and repeatable, so others can deliver it consistently.
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Its first question, Ready, asks whether the business could run without you and whether you have tested it. The answer decides how many of your options are real.
Sources & Further Reading
• John Warrillow, Built to Sell: Creating a Business That Can Thrive Without You (Portfolio, 2010)
• John S. Hammond, Ralph L. Keeney and Howard Raiffa, The Hidden Traps in Decision Making, Harvard Business Review, September/October 1998
• Chip Heath and Dan Heath, Decisive: How to Make Better Choices in Life and Work (Crown Business, 2013), reporting the decision research of Paul Nutt