One of my favorite articles that I’ve shared with our customers over the years is Dan and Chip Heath’s piece in Fast Company called “Analysis of Paralysis.” 

The two basic points of their article are:

1. Too many choices can paralyze you, and

2. Simplicity helps you take action.

Although this seems intuitive, the Heaths back it up with some interesting research:

(Researchers) gave doctors the medical history of a 67-year-old man who’d been suffering chronic hip pain from osteoarthritis. He’d been given drugs to treat his pain, but they had been ineffective, so there was only one viable option: hip-replacement surgery, which would involve a long and painful recovery. Then a final check with the pharmacy uncovered one medication that hadn’t been tried. Would the doctors like to give the drug a shot? 47% of doctors chose to try the medication in a final attempt to keep the patient from going under the knife.

Another group of doctors saw the same facts, except they were told that the pharmacy had discovered two medications that hadn’t been tried. If you were the patient with the bum hip, you’d be thrilled -- two nonsurgical options are better than one. But when the doctors were presented with two nonsurgical options, only 28% chose to try either one.

What happened here is decision paralysis. More options, even good ones, can freeze us, leading us to stick with the ‘default’ plan, which in this case was slicing open someone’s hip. This clearly is not rational behavior, but it is human behavior. Similar tests with different groups have revealed consistent results.

Over the years at Mission Met, we’ve seen these same types of results as it relates to strategic planning. Plans that are long and complex tend to get shelved. Why? Because, just like the doctors, the people responsible for executing the plans are super busy. For them, it’s much easier to blow off a complex plan than trying to sit down and work through all of the plan’s details and decisions.

The lesson? Simplicity will help your team take action.

At Mission Met, simplicity is a cornerstone of all of our programs/services. Specifically, our START strategic planning course provides organizations with a practical strategic plan that they can successfully achieve. Learn more about how START can transform your organization.