News and Events
Limit the number of options
by Mark Henry, Inc. on 11/19/12
Prevailing belief is that choice is paramount in effective decision-making--and the more options one has to select from the better the resulting decision. While it is true, that comparison serves as the foundation to good decision-making, it is equally true that when many choices are available there exists an equal and opposite impact on the decision-making outcome. The laboratory and real-world research of Iyengar and Lepper (2000) documents the detrimental influence that too many options pose on effective decision-making. Their findings indicate that when presented with seven or more choices the individual will tend not to select one of the presented options, instead, opting for the perceived easy course of action of doing nothing. Conversely, when presented with three or four options, the individual will quickly render a decision that is lasting (not subject to change)--provided the options or choices presented to choose from are truly distinct. To illustrate this point consider a once thriving United States based company that has not been able to produce a product for over two years. To help guide the organization back into production, the leadership team established 13 priorities and 5 aspirations that serve as the guiding principles for all actives within the organization. Unfortunately, the expected results of a return to production have not materialized. With over 18 items competing for resources and attention, it is of little wonder why a culture of inaction, taking the form of a general predisposition to do nothing, permeates the organization. While the aforementioned example may appear shocking, it is not a data set anomaly carefully chosen to highlight the effects of too many choices, it is instead an indictment of many public and private organizations both large and small trapped in a counter-intuitive mode of believing that the more options one has the better the decision will be. Reference Iyengar, S. S., & Lepper, M. R. (2000). When Choice is Demotivating: Can One Desire Too Much of a Good Thing? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 79(6), 995-1006.
