Options Matrix Tool
The Options Matrix Tool lays your strategic options out against a shared set of criteria, so a choice that felt like a gut call becomes a comparison everyone in the room can see and argue with.
Options fill the rows and criteria fill the columns, with a score sitting wherever they cross.
Reach for this when…
- Three people in the room each favour a different option and nobody can say exactly why.
- A big decision is about to be made on whoever argued loudest in the last meeting.
- You need to show a board or investor your reasoning, not just your conclusion.
How to run it
- List the real strategic options on the table, not a token 'do nothing' to pad the list.
- Agree the criteria that actually matter: feasibility, cost, risk, time to impact, fit with strategy.
- Build the grid: options down one side, criteria across the top.
- Score each option against each criterion, ideally with more than one person scoring.
- Look at the pattern, not just the total: an option brilliant on impact but hopeless on feasibility needs a real conversation, not an average.
- Choose, and write down why - the matrix is a discussion aid, not the decision itself.
A worked example
Situation. Roberto Jimenez runs Jimenez Empaques, a packaging manufacturer near San Jose, Costa Rica, deciding between three ways to grow: a new production line, an acquisition, or entering the German market directly.
Applied. He built the matrix with five criteria including cash required and time to break-even, and had his two co-directors score independently before comparing notes - the acquisition scored highest on paper but split opinion badly on risk.
Result. The disagreement on risk forced a proper debate that a gut decision would have skipped, and they chose the new production line, the option that had scored second but that everyone actually trusted.
The catch
A matrix makes a decision look more objective than it is - the scores are still opinions, just opinions with a number attached, and it's easy to reverse-engineer the criteria or weightings to justify a conclusion you'd already reached. It also struggles with options that don't sit neatly on the same criteria, or with genuinely disruptive options that don't score well on any conventional measure yet.
If the matrix always lands on the answer the loudest person in the room wanted anyway, the scoring was rigged, even if nobody meant it to be.