Make Better Choices in Life and Work, quote a study by Paul Nutt, a
man “who may know more than anyone alive about how managers
make decisions.” Using a rigorous protocol, he reviewed the
outcomes of 168 decisions made within organizations. He found
that in 71 percent of the decisions, the choice preceding the
decision was binary. It was simply: Should we do this? Or should
we not?
Nutt made the point that this percentage was on par with
(actually, slightly worse than) the ability of teenagers to create
options before making decisions. Yes, those terrible decisions
teenagers tend to make. And at least teenagers have the excuse
that their brains aren’t yet fully formed. It’s thus no surprise that
Nutt found that decisions made from these binary choices had a
failure rate greater than 50 percent.
He then looked at the success rate of decisions that involved
more choices. For instance, what would happen if you added just
one more option: Should we do this? Or this? Or not? The results
were startling. Having at least one more option lowered the
failure rate by almost half, down to about 30 percent.
When you use “And what else?” you’ll get more options and
often better options. Better options lead to better decisions.
Better decisions lead to greater success.
You Tame the Advice Monster
If this were a haiku rather than a book, it would read: