To achieve this step in the process, set aside time to create a wide range of solutions that advance shared interest.  This can be done before and during your negotiation or mediation.

There are 4 major obstacles which inhibit consideration of options:

1. Premature judgment
   • Hinders imagination and possibilities.
2. Searching for a single answer
   • by looking from the outset for the single best answer, you are likely to short-circuit a wiser decision-making process in which you select from a large number of possible answers.
3. Assumed a fixed pie
   • instead of trying to more advantageously divide the existing pie, consider ways to make a bigger pie.
4. Thinking that “solving their problem is their problem.”
   • For a negotiator to reach an agreement that meets their own self-interest they need to develop a solution which also appeal to the self-interest of the other party.

Invent ways of making the other side’s decisions easier and invent agreements of different strengths:

• Stronger 
  • Substantive
  • Permanent
  • Comprehensive
  • Final
  • Unconditional
  • Binding
  • First-order
  • Objective
• Weaker
  • Procedural
  • Provisional
  • Partial
  • In principle
  • Contingent
  • Nonbinding
  • Second-order

If a party will narrow the scope of the negotiation to manageable issues and broaden the negotiation to make the solution more amenable to the other party, a positive resolution is more realistic.  Preparation for negations is key to the process.