Leadership Training |How To Avoid Decision Making Paralysis

When asking someone to make a decision, overwhelming them with too many options means their brain has to process more information in order to actually decide. Overwhelming just a single person with too many options can be a challenge. You may have experienced this. Think of it this way. In a bar or restaurant, you want something to eat and the menu is such an extensive menu. It has so many choices. You can't decide between two or more items. It can feel frustrating. In the organisational arena, some decisions are not nearly as interesting but far more important than whether to have sticky toffee pudding or strawberry cheesecake. But with so much information and so many options available, each with their own potential benefits and drawbacks, which one do you choose? It can feel less like trying to make the best decision and more like trying to not make the worst possible decision. Overwhelm can have a part to play here, and it can lead to indecision. Indecision can lead to decision paralysis. In a group setting, some group members might wait for someone else, often an authority figure but not always, to make a decision that they can simply go along with and act upon if required. There are times to do this, of course. There are other times when it's simply an abdication of willingness to think and communicate and take ownership. That's not to be recommended. In the original study referenced in Barry Schwartz's book, The Paradox of Choice, a social experiment showed how choice overload can actually impede rather than help decision-making. Here's the scenario: at a food market event, a display of jams was presented to potential customers. When there were 24 different flavours of jam, presented to potential buyers, the display generated lots of engagement from visitors, but a disappointingly low number of sales were generated. However, when the selection of jams was reduced from 24 down to just 6, there was less active engagement from potential buyers, but more jam was purchased by the few people that did visit. Not just a little more jam was sold, but 10 times more jam than the display which had 24 to choose from. Other research, such as that evidenced in the decoy effect, might seem to contradict the findings of this experiment. However, what's more likely to be the case is that there's an optimal amount of choice for any given situation, and it can be situational. We like to have some choice, or at least the feeling that we have the freedom to choose, But we can find too many variables confusing and possibly emotionally overwhelming too. And when we're overwhelmed, rarely are high-quality decisions made. The key rule here is think things through and have it so your counterpart thinks, "Don't make me think too much." Which is to say, humans prefer to make easy decisions. Easy decisions require less cognitive load. Here's a leadership move for you. When presenting a recommendation to a counterpart or stakeholders that requires one or more people to make a decision, tell them why your recommendation is your recommendation and your thinking behind it that led you to this recommendation and why it's the best one to pursue. You can also tell them why you decided against other potential recommendations so they understand and appreciate you've thought about multiple options the risks, the benefits, the drawbacks, and consequences before deciding on the one you're actually presenting for consideration. If you're struggling to make a decision because of multiple options being available on their own with their own benefits and drawbacks, consider what is most important to your organisation, to your stakeholder or stakeholders, to your budget, to your resource, whatever else deserves to be considered. Remember though, you're thinking, recommending, and deciding on behalf of your organisation, not just yourself, so it's important if you options from multiple perspectives, but not too many, of course.