Navigating Choice with Sheena Iyengar

Choice is the foundation of self-determination. But, what if too much choice leads to the inability to act or move forward? The most successful leaders are the ones who prioritize their time, minimizing the number of choices they make on a daily basis.

Meet Sheena

After losing her vision as a teenager, Sheena Iyengar became very accustomed to hearing the phrase “it’s not possible.” Due to her own circumstances, she became fascinated with the concept of choice.

In this episode, host Gautam Mukunda speaks with Sheena, an author and Columbia Business Professor, about what can happen when people have too much choice, and how the best leaders approach the art of choosing.

Timestamps

[4:29] “You have to ask yourself every single day, what are the 3-5 most important things that I need to accomplish today and everything else that’s lesser important, delegate.”

[7:22] “In the last half a century, we have really created a choice explosion in the marketplace.”

[9:45] “The choices that are the most empowering and the reason why we were drawn to choice innately to begin with, is because it is the only tool we have to actually create what we need to essentially give ourselves self-determination.”

[14:57] “The mere presence of choice makes people think that because that choice exists it must be really important.”

[16:55] "I want people to be much more thoughtful about what are their priorities, what do they need to accomplish, what are the problems they are trying to solve?"

Transcript

Gautam Mukunda (00:00):

The average CEO makes 139 decisions a week. Great leaders know how to choose the right ones.

Sheena Iyengar (00:08):

We have to be able to focus because otherwise that drive to go after everything could actually help us get less.

Speaker 3 (00:15):
World Reimagined with Gautam Mukunda, a leadership podcast for a changing World. An original podcast from Nasdaq.

Sheena Iyengar (00:30):

The words that I hated most growing up and even now is the words, "It's not possible." And I felt like I heard that a lot and I heard that a lot not just in Indian society, but even in American society, even in Japanese society. No matter where I went I would always hear the words, "It's not possible." But particularly because you're a blind person, people are always so worried and they just don't see how it's possible.

Gautam Mukunda (00:56):

Sheena Iyengar lost her vision as a teenager. Soon after, she became fascinated with the concept of choice. Caught between the cultural messaging that many things are impossible for a blind person and her own determination to create the life that she desired, Sheena began to study which choices and options were within her reach. Not long afterwards, she began to study how all of us make our decisions in the first place.

(01:24):

Her PhD dissertation Choice and its Discontents would become the bestselling book, The Art of Choosing. And today she is the S.T. Lee professor at the Columbia Business School with a new book, Think Bigger: How to Innovate, published earlier this year. How many times have you heard the expression that we are defined by our choices? Our concepts of freedom and identity are inextricably linked to our decision-making, and yet, it can also feel as if we are inundated by choice, that we have so many options it's paralyzing. How do we navigate this world to make the right calls on the choices that really matter?

Sheena Iyengar (02:06):

If there's one thing you're hearing both Democrats and Republicans say is, "I want more choice." What are they really saying? They're saying, "I don't like what I have right now. Give me a meaningful choice." And what's the response in the marketplace? Well, you have in the marketplace, meaning potential political candidates, a mix of actually candidates that are not that different, but find ways to differentiate themselves because they understand they have to do that, particularly as the marketplace of choice seems to be at least on the face of it, expanding. And second, they may not have more choices to offer or there may be other reasons why the so-called more different choices don't appear.

Gautam Mukunda (02:55):

I'm going to follow that thread, but I don't want to leave this question of how does this overwhelming nature choice make us feel? Because there was a Michael Lewis profile of Barack Obama where Barack Obama said that he always wore blue suits because he was like, "I only get to make so many choices well in a day, and every choice I make counts, so I'm just not going to make a choice here."

(03:12):

Now it turned out that he was actually pulling Michael Lewis' leg. Right? This was actually not true and that he was saying this to Mike and did not actually think he would be believed when he said it, Michael Lewis. But it sounds like the idea behind it is something that you actually would support, that it does make sense to think about the world this way.

Sheena Iyengar (03:28):

Oh, absolutely. And I bet you it wasn't entirely pulling his leg. I bet you Barack Obama does try to remove as many trivial or unimportant decisions as he can from his day and as much as possible, automate it, delegate it. Every successful person does that no matter who they are or what their job is.

(03:47):

My best advice that I give students, who as MBA students walk in the door and they are about to experience far more choice than they've had probably ever before in their life. I say the best way to take advantage of choice is to be choosy about choosing. Ask yourself how many choices do you really need? Which choices are worth making? Which choices are simply distracting you from your larger goals? Because you have to be choosy about choosing to get the most from it.

Gautam Mukunda (04:16):

So, if you're a leader like Barack Obama or a CEO, anyone who's balancing these both very personal and very consequential choices, what's the advice you would give them about which ones they should make and which ones they should delegate?

Sheena Iyengar (04:29):

You have to ask yourself every single day, what are the three to five most important things that I need to accomplish today, or think about today? And everything else that's lesser important, delegate or go what appears to be good enough.

Gautam Mukunda (04:45):
Have you heard of the Eisenhower Matrix?

Sheena Iyengar (04:47):

No.

Gautam Mukunda (04:53):

Even as the leader of the free world, Eisenhower used a simple two-by-two matrix to prioritize all of the infinite decisions he needed to make. He classified every decision as urgent or not urgent and important or not important. Decisions that were not important and not urgent, he could safely ignore. Tasks that were urgent but not important, he would delegate to others. Those that were important but not urgent, he scheduled for later. And those that were both urgent and important, he did immediately himself.

(05:27):

A four-square grid may sound almost childishly simple, but it helped one person lead successful invasions of Northern Africa, Sicily and France, defeat European fascism and spend two terms as president of the United States.

Sheena Iyengar (05:43):

That's great. I love it. In fact, I'm going to steal that one because Eisenhower was one of our great presidents at Columbia University.

Gautam Mukunda (05:50):

Yes, he was. He wasn't very happy there though. He did not like the faculty. I think it was mutual.

Sheena Iyengar (05:58):

There was a wonderful story about Eisenhower, which is that he was sitting in his office in the iconic Low Library. While he's sitting there, this groundsman comes in and, "Mr. President, Mr. President, you must come to the window right now." And he brings the president to the window and he's very upset because he's saying, "Look at all those young people. They're ruining our lawns as they just traipse across everywhere." And Eisenhower famously said, "They're showing us where to make our paths."

Gautam Mukunda (06:28):

Human beings are wired to want freedom of choice. Our ability to make meaningful and impactful decisions helped our ancestors survive a dangerous prehistoric world where quick thinking often meant the difference between life and death. But now that we've made it to the modern age, it can seem like this propensity to create forks in the road has made our world needlessly complicated.

(06:52):

One has to wonder, did we create box stores and streaming services and dating apps because there were no more saber-tooth tigers to avoid? When choices are seemingly everywhere you look, how do people with teams counting on them determine which ones actually demand a decision?

Sheena Iyengar (07:09):

When you asked me earlier, where has choice really exploded? Yes, in older generations we obviously had to deal with a lot of complexity, but I would say in the last half a century we have really created a choice explosion in the marketplace. And by that I mean not just that we now have many, many more things to read, things to eat and drink. I mean, yeah, it's a little ridiculous. I mean, who has time to go through all that? Right? So, you're a fellow Indian and probably if not your parents, then your grandparents probably had an arranged match, right?

Gautam Mukunda (07:51): Sure.

Sheena Iyengar (07:52):

That was a choice that was an important one, but you didn't really get too much involved in that one. And even though in Western society we didn't call it arranged match, it was essentially an arranged courtship, right? Because most people still married within a four block radius of where they lived, to people who lived within a four block radius.

(08:14):

Today we have 8,000 different dating apps around the world, 2,500 of which are right here in the US. Most people are on multiple dating apps. And that's just one example of the kind of decision that we make today about which we have so many more choices, and that was a decision that we really didn't think about in this way. Same thing goes for, what will be the genetic makeup of my child? Will I die? And when will I die? And how should I die? I mean, those weren't things we thought was the kind of things we should be thinking about. Today, those are all up for grabs.

Gautam Mukunda (08:52):

So, this is a striking phenom, right? Because the research on arranged marriages suggests that they are at least as happy, maybe more happy than non-arranged marriages. Which to me suggests that on what is presumably the most important decision you'll make in your life, that it turns out that we're not all that good at it. Should leaders be deliberately restricting either their own ambit of choice or that of people in their organizations in the hope that if you have a smaller purview of choice, you might be able to make better ones?

Sheena Iyengar (09:21):

So, my view on choice is more nuanced than just simply saying, restrict people. I do think that there's a delicate balance to be had between imposing constraints on people, but then once those constraints are in place, actually giving people the tools to create many more solutions. And that's because the choices that are the most empowering and the reason why we were drawn to choice innately to begin with is because it is the only tool we have to actually create what we need to essentially give ourselves self- determination, whether that's as an individual or some kind of a collective, a family, a company, a country.

(10:08):

So, don't think it's as simple as, "Please get rid of all choices." And I don't believe that we are universally better off by allowing so-called benevolent higher ups to take away our choices. I do believe that each of us who makes a choice or say, who creates a choice to enter the market, should have to answer the question, how is this different? I do think there should be a higher threshold by which a choice enters the marketplace, to make it so that the requirements on the choice creator are higher, but also the ability to understand what is this thing? Is better for the chooser. So, I'm a big believer in making choices more empowering.

Gautam Mukunda (10:55):

Well, the only benevolent dictator I know is my dog who firmly believes my life should be ruled by his every whim, and it is. But to me, this seems like this is a key intellectual linkage between your first and your second books.

Sheena Iyengar (11:11):

Absolutely.

Gautam Mukunda (11:12):

Because if your first book is saying, look, adding more choice is not necessarily a good thing, so that we make sure that the ones that you add are good ones, it seems like the message of your second book is, this is how you come up with the good ones.

Sheena Iyengar (11:22):

Exactly. Oh, boy, I should have you be my marketer.

Gautam Mukunda (11:27):

Leaders are faced with a seemingly endless stream of decisions on a daily basis, but not all of them have the same impact. Oftentimes, leaders spend their days jumping from decision to decision, putting out fires to keep things steady. But if those same leaders are savvy about the choices they do and don't make, they might be able to achieve something beyond just maintaining the status quo. They might be able to innovate.

Sheena Iyengar (11:56):

I think the philosophers, the politicians, I don't even think Thomas Jefferson or Benjamin Franklin were thinking when they started to talk about freedom and liberty and independence, I don't think they were thinking about a marketplace of a lot of choice. I don't even think Adam Smith thought about it. I think they were thinking about empowering people through choice so that they could create. They were thinking about creation, imagination.

(12:27):

I think what happened as a result of capitalism moving ahead, economic theory, particularly microeconomics, we essentially began to think of choice as the tool by which you can pick and find, right? Because the goal was choice optimization, and that was supposed to be the great benefit of having a marketplace that gave you a lot of choice. And certainly, I'm not saying that choice optimization can't exist, but there are limits to how much time I can spend on every choice to optimize to find the one that's the perfect fit for my preferences.

(13:02):

I think the second purpose of choice, which I think got lost in say the last 30, 40 years, has been the really important purpose of choice was that it was the tool by which we could imagine. We could take the various things that already existed in our world and reconfigure them in a way that gave us something new, something new that would add value to our lives. And that's what's unique to us as humans, that we have that ability. No other species does that.

Gautam Mukunda (13:41):

Is there something about this barrage of choice that makes it harder for us to do that now?

Sheena Iyengar (13:43):

See, it's conflated, right? Because it's not just that we have too much choice, we also have illusory choice, right? I mean, I'm blind, so maybe I shouldn't be asking this question, but do you really know the difference between simply white and super white? And it was like how many different white paints are there that Benjamin Moore sells? I mean, I suppose if you're a real color expert, it might matter.

Gautam Mukunda (14:08):

I mean, I am colorblind, so the answer in my case is absolutely not. But my wife assures me that the differences are real and profound, and I should just do whatever she tells me to on this subject.

Sheena Iyengar (14:16):

Okay. Good.

Gautam Mukunda (14:22):

Apparently. But the thread I'm teasing out here, right? Is quite complicated and fascinating. One is, there's the ability to use the illusory choices that you're describing to constrict people from making the choices that actually matter. Right? I get to choose my paint color, and therefore it somehow becomes easier to deny me the ability to choose the shape of my life. And it seems to me that that's a problem you're identifying.

(14:44):

What you're trying to do in your new book is give people the tools to construct the choices that really will break them free from the constraints that have been created on their lives. Is that right?

Sheena Iyengar (14:54):

I love the way you put it, but yes, you're right. I'm saying that the mere presence of choice makes people think that because that choice exists, it must be really important. So therefore, I better figure out, what do I want? Even if I actually don't have a clue, maybe I didn't even care, dot, dot, dot. And also, I couldn't actually tell them apart.

(15:13):

What I think though, the purpose of choices is to help you actually solve your problems. And it's not that the marketplace of all this choice has given us solutions that solve many of our big and small problems that confront us as individuals and as collectives. So, we do need the tools to actually solve problems. I will tell you as a blind person, that despite all the plethora of choices out in the marketplace, most solutions I have to create for myself even now. It's not like they suddenly gave me a lot more solutions to the daily problems that confront me.

Gautam Mukunda (15:47):

I wonder, could I link that? Because it seems to me that one of the key threads that I took from your book was essentially that many so-called innovations are not made in a way that properly takes into account people who will use them. So, they're not actually all that useful. And that sounds like what you're just describing, that there are all of these choices in the world that are supposed to be helpful for you, but they weren't actually designed by people who understood what you needed.

Sheena Iyengar (16:08):

That's right. I think a lot of it's because we have this misconception out there that every new thing, whatever it is that distinguishes it, no matter how, I don't know, wild or inane, or it just has to look cool in some way, and somehow it should exist. But that can actually clutter our world as opposed to asking ourselves, what could be useful? What do we really need? That's why so many of our problems today that confront individuals and society, we don't really have meaningful solutions.

Gautam Mukunda (16:41):

So, what is the key takeaway that you want leaders to take from your book and from speaking to you about this, about how they can create solutions that provide people what they really need?

Sheena Iyengar (16:52):

I want them to be much more thoughtful. And so, broadly speaking, I want people to be much more thoughtful about what are their priorities? What do they need to accomplish? What are the problems they're trying to solve? That's the think-bearer language, which is, what's the problem you're really trying to solve? Why does that problem exist? I mean, yes, there's a bazillion reasons why we have climate change, but break it down, what's the part of that problem you want to solve? And what are the three to five really important challenges that you need to solve for in order to make a difference?

(17:26):

So, there was a great French polymath by the name of Henri Poincaré, who by the way, was the source of inspiration for both diverse people as Einstein and Picasso. And he said that, "Invention consists of avoiding the constructing of useless combinations and consists of the constructing of useful combinations, which are in infinite minority. To invent is to discern, to choose." And we think of these moments when people had these so-called flashes of insight as almost being divine intervention. What's actually happening is that they have been thinking about the problem, trying to work it out. They are going through various pieces in their head in different combinations. They keep combining and recombining in different ways. And sometimes when they're in a shower or they happen to be sitting under a tree or they're on a jog, they realize, "Oh, I hadn't thought of combining it in this particular way." And voila, you have your solution.

Gautam Mukunda (18:34):

A person in Sheena's position could have easily seen herself as someone with few choices. After all, that's how most people saw her. Instead, she realized that if the array of choices life presents to you isn't good enough, you might be able to invent your own.

(18:53):

It's easier said than done in a world that's teeming with options, but if we can eliminate the noisy and the inconsequential decisions in our lives, and if we can be canny about recombining the choices that remain, we'll be left with something new, different and perfectly tailored to us. Perhaps that's her greatest lesson for leaders. You aren't just defined by the choices you make. If you're innovative enough, you can be defined by the choices you create.

Speaker 3 (19:27):

World Reimagined with Gautam Mukunda, a leadership podcast for a changing world. An original podcast from Nasdaq.