Reducing Options to Improve Decisions

Do your employees have difficulty breaking past behaviors? Or accepting new ones?

Here's the problem. Most of us prefer the process we know rather than the productivity-enhancing one we don't. We might like it if we tried it; we just don't want to try it, thank you very much. And no amount of cajoling, short of firing, is going to change our minds.

One thing you might try to help your staff make the right choice is restrict the options for them, writes Peter Bregman on Harvard Business Publishing.

"Sometimes, for people to be able to make smart choices, they have to experience them first hand. Only then can they bring themselves to choose well. Otherwise, prejudices get in the way."

In other words, help people choose by eliminating choices.

Sink or Swim
Your employees have become comfortable coming to you for key decisions. You would rather they make decisions as a group. How do you encourage this? Remove options. Do what a manager actually did in this situation, says Bregman: Go on vacation for three weeks and don't check messages while you are away.

"When he eventually picked up his voicemail he noticed something interesting. The first messages were all asking him what they should do. The last messages were all telling him what they eventually did do."

At first blush, Bregman's idea seems like a step back towards kindergarten. "If you children can't figure out what to do, then I'll make it easy for you!" On the other hand, resistance to new ideas isn't just a childhood phenomenon; we're all susceptible.

Can you think of examples when this type of solution has worked for you?