52
DI R E C T T H E R IDE R
Being innovative and creative versus optimizing efficiency. If you fold together lots of those tensions, you create
a
surefire recipe
for paralysis. It took only two medications to fuzz the doctors' brains. How many options do your people have? Think about your local school board. Every year, the prob足 lems and solutions multiply. You can just imagine the mental conversation: "Property tax revenue is falling, but the teachers need a 3 percent cost-of-living raise, and we can't forget about extracurriculars (cutting the marching band last year was a killer) , but we must continue to invest in our new science magnet school-if it doesn't work, there will be egg on our face-yet it's ridiculous to consider any of this until we fix our crumbling in足 frastructure and address our overcrowded classrooms." For the frazzled school board member, it suddenly looks a lot more attractive to roll over last year's budget with a 1 . 5 percent increase on every line item. As Barry Schwartz puts it in his book The Paradox a/Choice,
as we face more and more options, "we become overloaded. Choice no longer liberates, it debilitates. It might even be said to tyrannize."
2.
The status quo feels comfortable and steady because much of the choice has been squeezed out. You have your routines, your ways of doing things. For most of your day, the Rider is on autopilot. But in times of change, autopilot doesn't work anymore, choices suddenly proliferate, and autopilot habits become unfamiliar de足 cisions. When you're on a diet, the habitual daily trip for Nachos Bell Grande is disqualified, and in its place is left a decision. When you've got a new manager, the way you communicate stops being second nature and starts being a choice.