I was thrilled to see the recent cover of Newsweek magazine entitled; “ Brain Freeze – How the deluge of information paralyzes our ability to make good decisions.” The article does a great job of outlining the impacts of one edge of the modern-day decisioning dilemma we all face; access to too much information. The punch line of the article is that having too much information is not a good thing when it comes to making decisions. With too much information or choices we end up being pickers that make less effective choices and are more likely to be remorseful about our selections.

I’m not surprised by the timing of it, given the rapid acceleration of technology and information at our finger tips. Google has provided us with the amazing ability to make the universe available to us in just a few quick clicks. More and more information continues to come online through Tweet’s, Facebook and other social media outlets. Before we know even the most mundane task of researching what appliance to buy can become a multi-level algorithm of weighted data points drawn from thousands of sources.

It reminds me of  black box investing in it’s heyday when it was promoted as the way to beat the markets by factoring in endless amounts of data that only a few really understood. Now everyone has the ability to be their own black box builders of decision criteria, but apparently it has diminishing returns.    

The article also made me think of the song, Too Much Information, by the Police, which launched 30 years ago this October. The song’s lyrics of “too much information running through my brain, too much information driving me insane” repeat again and again throughout the song.  So this dilemma of information overload is not just a modern-day dilemma.  I’m sure even Sting would get a chuckle out of the difference of information he deals with today versus 30 years ago when he wrote the song.  

The piece that is missing for me in the article is the omission of what I call the other edge of decisioning dilemma, providing enough alternatives. If, as the article suggests, we are getting overwhelmed by too much information and options; then what happens if there is not enough alternatives to consider. My work with organizations on Decision Quality has shown me that too often the real issue is the fact that the organization is not creating enough meaningful alternatives to consider.

The natural tendency is to go with what you know, what is comfortable, or what is proven. This also allows organizations to gather the information they know and have easy access to. The result is more of the same and patterned responses to decision opportunities that generally ends in the safe solution being chosen. The challenge for most busy organizations and executives is to expand the number of options to consider in any big decision to expand the realm of possibilities. Admittedly this takes time, resources and a decent amount of generative creativity. Not an easy task in today’s fast paced, limited resources climate. The result is they tend to settle on less alternatives and then research the you know what of them because as we discussed the data is now addictingly easy to gather and it helps to justify the easy answer.

My belief is that a high quality decision needs to have at least 3 to 5 alternatives to consider. If they are well thought alternatives then the critical next step is to define the values that are most important to you or the organization to help you decide what alternative gives you the most of what you value the most. If you need information to help you in that value based comparison then build an information strategy to collect only the information you need to feel confident in your value based decision. Focus on gathering data that is material, meaning if you had it or knew it, you would change your decision. Anything more than that is immaterial and as the Newsweek article points out only serves to cloud your decision effectiveness.

I realize that putting the information gathering at the end of the process is a big shift, especially for organizations where there is a culturally bias and pride about being metrics driven, given our information rich environment. But as the article states and as Sting belts into our brain, if you don’t resist the urge to gather too much data, then the quality of your decision will suffer and so will you. My invitation to you is to focus your energy, and ideally those of others around you, on creating meaningful alternatives and getting really clear on what you value most to help you decide which alternative you should decide to pursue. Save the data gathering for last and only collect what information you need to confirm your decision and save the brain freeze for something more fun like eating ice cream.