Once again, this is another great
video to be exposed to. Few people ever
really sit and think about choices and how choices, no matter how trivial, can
affect their daily lives. Within the
video, I like how she broke down choice making and the benefits of doing so and
specifically how there must be assumptions associated with choice in order for
choice to be viewed in a positive light.
The 3 assumptions of Make your own choices, More options lead to better
choices, and never say no to choice are all three very important assumptions
that are present within our daily lives, even though I am just now realizing
it.
Making our own choices is something
that is an inherent right within our country.
How else could you have “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”
without being able to choose how you do this?
But this mindset can be extremely foreign to people that are not
accustomed to choice. In the video, Dr.
Iyengar discussed how eastern Europeans are often uncomfortable with choice due
to them not having it under the Soviet regime.
This is similar to what is occurring right now in the Middle East. Multiple dictatorships have fallen within the
past 10 years and now the countries are exposed to choice. In the case of Iraq, I can tell you first
hand that choosing something can be very scary for someone that has never had
the ability to choose on their own.
These people are now able to choose all sorts of things, none-the-less
their government, and a result, these countries are seeing a drastic change in
the make-up of their society. You can
also see the resistance against this change by “old-timers” – they don’t want
you to have the ability to choose – they want you to live your life according
to their interpretations. You can also
see how scary choice can be when given the ability to do it within the
military. I am all about empowering by
subordinates to make decisions at their levels.
Often this is somewhat foreign to them and as a result, it takes them
many months for them to start making decisions in a timely manner.
The second point of more choices
means better decisions is something I already know to be a false assumption –
something that she Dr. Iyengar discusses within the video. While standing watch as the Officer of the
Deck, you can quickly become flooded with information when decisions must be
made. All this information leads to
different options springing up left and right.
As a result, what was originally a rather simple question with distinct
choices grows until you have an almost infinite number of options, all of which
you wish you could analyze (if you had time), but in the end you must make a
decision and make it fast. I think what
is crucial to prevent this choice overload is appropriate screening of choices
at lower level in the chain of command.
If done correctly, there should only be a handful of options on the
table and these options represent the best possible solutions to the
problems. In reality, this is already
somewhat done – policies and procedures place restrictions for you to operate
within.
The final assumption of never
saying no to choice is one that I have a hard time thinking about due to my
inability to separate my thought processes from my upbringing. As discussed within the video, as Americans,
we are taught that choice is always a good thing; however as the video also
showed, having a choice is not always a good thing. The specific example from the video – do you
take your baby off of life support in a hopeless situation – is an example of a
choice that would be heartbreaking to make, but one that I would rather have
than not. I could not imagine being in
the situation, but again, I also could not imagine being in a position where I
didn’t have the final say in what happens, and this is purely a cultural way of
thinking. You can show me the graphs
that say I will have mental issues down the road due to having to make this
choice, but it is one that I want to make.
When it comes to leadership, making
choices is something that you are essentially paid to do. You are the guy that decides what option the
company goes with and it is your duty to see that the decision is fully
implemented. I think all 3 assumptions as discussed above
can have the same context when applied within a business setting, i.e. that it
is good to make your own choices (again, that is your job as a leader), that
having too many choices can be a bad thing (too many options leads to the inability
to clearly differentiate between the different options and compounds the
difficulty of the problem), and that you should never say no to choice (again,
you should always be looking to make the decisions). Again, this was a great video that opens up
your mind to how we view choices. Finally,
I completely agree with her final comment that a rose with any other name will
probably look and smell different. How we
perceive the reality around us, including the different senses, are all
unquestionably linked together; thus the phrase: if it looks like a duck and
walks like a duck, it’s a duck.
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