Key to Success: Remove Decision Making

We all want to nudge our teams and people to become the best version of themselves. As leaders, we see it as our role to help create a supportive environment. What if the key to helping individuals make the best decision is to remove options?  

Let's explore what this means. The first premise is that willpower is an exhaustible resource. This means we become tired of and after making decisions. The busier we feel, the more micro decisions that one has to make during the course of a day. And that is exhausting. This means the micro decisions we make throughout the day leave us feeling mentally exhausted and depletes our willpower. Ever wonder why you decide not to make dinner after a long day or don't exercise after the long day? You're mentally exhausted and your willpower has no more reserve. Therefore, you can't "will" yourself to a better action. 

When you apply this thinking to your workplace, you can optimize decision fatigue for your teams. Make the best decisions policy. Office lunches? Allow only healthy options for lunches to be selected from specific vendors, which means no pizza lunches. Too much? Make water the only available drink during lunch. Do people celebrate birthdays with cake more than once per month? Celebrate all birthdays in a month on one Friday with cake instead of cake being present throughout the month. Beyond food, you could make all 1:1 meetings walking meetings. On one hand, you may think that you're making requirements or enforcing specific behaviors, but what you're really doing is institutionalizing the best decisions. If there is no decision to make, there's no willpower (or cake involved).  

This doesn't extend to just the workplace habits and practices either. Steve Jobs, notoriously famous for his black mock turtleneck, sneakers and jeans, wore the same style outfit everyday. So did Einstein and Barack Obama as well. They removed the overhead of decision making in the micro decisions so their willpower could be used for larger and more important tasks. In their own way, they made the best decisions "policy" and there were fewer decisions as a result. 

Making a decision policy institutionalizes best practices for your organization and ultimately becomes the bedrock of your culture. 

Marty Boyer is the president and COO of Physi. Physi is a mobile app available for both iOS and Android platforms that allows fitness-minded individuals of all ages, families, and employees engaged in corporate wellness programs, to connect with partners or players for more than 50 sports activities ranging from mountain biking, to billiards, to tennis, golf, kayaking and volleyball. For more information, visit http://www.physi.rocks. #getPhysi