"The Tyranny of Choice"

Have you ever found yourself in a restaurant wondering what to order?  I often have this problem.  Even after carefully reviewing the menu and finding a number of dishes that look really appetizing and good, I am still unable to decide.  The server comes back a few times and gives me his or her recommendation ("This is my absolute favorite dish on the menu!"), and I still can't make a selection.  I can usually narrow my selection down to two dishes, and invariably my wife will pick one and then I will pick the other.  As it so happens, if I have been to the restaurant before, I usually pick "an old standby" dish that I've had again and again.  The same thing happens when I pick a beer or wine - I usually go with what I have selected in the past.

I know what you are thinking, and you are wrong.  It's not that I have trouble making decisions.  Nor am I afraid to try new things.  I think it all comes down to something that has been called "the tyranny of choice."  The American psychologist, Barry Schwartz wrote an article in Scientific American ("The Tyranny of Choice", as well as a book called The Paradox of Choice.  There is also a TED talk of the same name, if you are interested in hearing from Schwartz directly.  The premise of the article, the book, and the TED talk is essentially this - the prevailing viewpoint in our modern society that the more choices that an individual has (i.e., more personal freedom), the happier he or she will be in life is a wrong one.  As multiple studies by a number of different investigators in a variety of context (in fact, almost every context examined, both in the laboratory setting and in field studies), the greater the number of choices, the lower the satisfaction and the greater the regret with the decision that is ultimately made.  In other words, having a greater number of choices in life actually makes us feel worse!

We often have a seemingly infinite number of choices in life.  Just walk down the grocery aisle and look at how many kinds of shampoo that you can buy or even how many different kinds of dog food your pet can enjoy!  Ice cream parlors have "31 Flavors" and fast-food chains tell us to "Have it Your Way!"  We even have a number of choices when we select our health insurance plans at work, and just think about how many dentists or physicians we can go see on these plans. 

Sheena Iyengar and Mark Lepper actually studied consumer choice in a field experiment performed in a grocery store ("When Choice is Demotivating: Can One Desire Too Much of a Good Thing?").  In the experiment, consumers were asked to select a gourmet jam from either a limited set of choices (only six choices of gourmet jam) or an expanded set of choices (up to 24-30 types of gourmet jam).  Consumers were more likely to buy the gourmet jam when they were given a limited number of choices AND they reported greater subsequent satisfaction after they made their selection when they have a limited number of choices.

The lesson here is this (quoting Schwartz from his TED talk) - "some choice is better than no choice, but it doesn't follow that more choice is better than some choice."  Why do I always choose the "old standby" at the restaurant?  There are just too many choices on the menu.  Rather than trying to choose from all of the menu choices, I end up selecting what I usually choose.

What's the leadership lesson here?  Giving your teams a choice, whenever possible, is a good thing.  "Some choice is better than no choice."  But be careful about the number of options that you provide, because "more choice is NOT better than some choice."