Decisions, Decisions, Decisions…

Do you make decisions?  Do your employees make decisions?  Of course, you and they do—that’s obvious!  Now think about the outcomes from all of the decisions you and they make every day.  Is the right, “common sense” one always made?  Do you or they ever regret any of the decisions?  Or are there times when you or they avoid making certain decisions, hoping that enough time will pass where the choice simply goes away or morphs into an easier decision?  Do you think your or their decisions have an impact on work—performance, quality and safety?  You’re probably nodding you head and thinking “yes, of course!”

So why do I even bring this up?  Because making the right or wrong choice has significant impact on what happens at work—such as whether the inspector catches the defect before the product ships to the customer, whether the employee gets injured or injures another employee, whether things get done the right way, whether the correct strategy is chosen or …I could go on and on.  The fact is all of us are faced with thousands of decisions each day.  Luckily the great majority are of minimal consequence.  However, if the wrong choice is made for the decisions that matter the results can minor to catastrophic.  If you’re a people manager, it imperative to know how we humans feel about choices and how we can properly manage choices so the right decision is made virtually every time. 

Here are 3 key points to know about decisions (choices, options and decisions will be used interchangeably):

1.      Having fewer options is preferred over may

This is where the paradox of choice kicks in.  Although we prefer to have many options such as employee participation in wellness programs or being given much leeway in which to accomplish a task, the overload of options makes people’s decisions actually more complicated.  For example, it has been shown that when there are lots of mutual fund options available, fewer people participate than when there are only a few, even though by failing to participate, employees pass up matching money from their employers.  So it is definitely possible to offer employees too-much-choice which in turn may lead to poor decision-making or indecision. 

2.      More choices do not always lead to better options and greater satisfaction

Related to above, choice overload can make people question the decisions they make before they even make them. It can set them up for unrealistically high expectations and it can make them blame themselves for the failure. Research has shown that too much choice can lead to:

·        Cognitive burden – the extra thought and effort required to compare the available options,

·        Post-decision regret – the fear that your decision might have been the wrong one,

·        Anticipated regret – where the fear of making an incorrect choice is so overwhelming that no choice is made at all

As managers the last thing you want is your team to be slowed down by fear of making the wrong decision. 

3.      People are creatures of habit

There’s a natural human inclination to resist change and make different choices even when given a new set of better choices.  Regardless of given better options, people will still tend to pick the most familiar one, the one they have always picked because it’s comfortable.  They know what the consequences will be and therefore avoid the cognitive stressors as mentioned above. 

Conclusion:

Does choice overload always occur? Of course not. Does it affect all people, in all areas of decision making? Of course not. Does it matter how options are organized and arrayed? Absolutely. Does adding options improve decision making by making noticeable features of alternatives that might otherwise be ignored? Sometimes, yes. But sometimes it has an unwanted effect, by making noticeable features of options that should to be ignored.

Application:

For work tasks that involve making a decision:  Limit the number of options as much as possible in order to minimize error/injury and contemplation time.  Having a choice or A or B; or A, B or C is much preferred over A-F.

For increasing employee participation in programs:  Don’t get carried away by thinking you need to offer several options that in some way will appeal to all employees in order to get everyone on board.  The trick is to find the middle ground — the “sweet spot” — that enables people to benefit from variety and not be paralyzed by it. Choice is good, but there can be too much of a good thing.

For getting team buy-in on a new initiative/policy:  Provide the team choices on when and how to implement the initiative/policy within the confines of the initiative/policy goals.  As stated previously, the natural response to new things is to resist, especially when “the powers that be” in an organization send down a mandate.  Instead of pushing the new initiative, provide a few options that will in the end result in the achieving the goals of the new initiative.