The presentation that really started the wheels turning tonight was by Barry Schwartz. It has to do with “The Paradox of Choice.” According to Mr. Schwartz, one of western society’s underlying values is that more choices means more happiness. And, in his eyes, this assumption is false. Sure, it may hold true to some extent. But then you devolve quickly into the realm of too many choices and find that you don’t want to make a decision, feel bad about making a decision, etc etc. Happiness does not increase linearly with the amount of choices that you are presented with.

Of course, one of the first things that popped into my head was my choice to going into Accounting. Does the paradox of choice hold true here? I think it does.

Think about it: as a student, you have a ton of choices. You can major in just about anything (notwithstanding family pressures, availability of major at your school, etc). The idea is that you choose something and you stick with it for the rest of your life. If I had continued my Computer Science major, I would have been stuck with it. Forever. That’s a long time for someone who is usually made to decide at some point in high school or shortly thereafter.

Looking back to my life in general before I made the conscious decision to do Accounting and Information Systems, I was less happy in general. A large part of my time was sucked up just pondering the future. Yes, the possibilities were limitless. But that actually damaged my overall happiness. As soon as I made a choice that eliminated a lot of options, I was almost instantly happier.

It’s not just me, either. I’ve seen it in others that have gone through the same decision making process. The results are pretty dramatic.

I mean, just think about the last time that you and a friend tried to figure out somewhere to go to eat. You figure out that you’re both hungry. You figure out that you want to go out. Maybe you even have a certain type of food that you want. Even then, you spend a lot of time and effort to make sure that you’re making the right decision. On something as trivial as a meal. Morgan and I are often prime examples of this – it takes us way longer than it should to figure out where to eat. And, in the end, we’re often not all that happy with our choice anyways. The best meals consist of: “You know what I’m really craving? Sushi.” “Me too!” “OK, let’s go.”

It’s almost like one of my favorite quotes: “it’s not what you know, but who you know.” Except in this instance it’s “it doesn’t matter what you decide, it matters that you decide.”

Now that we’ve figured out that more choices doesn’t equal more happiness, how do we change our behavior?

Well, I would say that there are unlimited choices for changing behaviors.

But I guess that wouldn’t quite make us happy, now, would it?

Information is one of those things that intrigues me. It’s a love-hate relationship. I love learning, I love absorbing new information, and I love the idea that in this day and age its all at my fingertips. However, good information is hard to come by, most information will never be put to use (in one eye, out the other), and some information that you get is just plain wrong.

Google co-founder Sergey Brin has had an obsession with information for a long time. It’s a deeply personal obsession for him; if you haven’t read about him, you should. Talk about a success story: going from penniless foreigner who had to walk hours to the nearest library, where he consumed books by the bucketload, to one of the most successful men in the world. Information truly is power (and, apparently, wielding information is even more power).

Considering one of my majors in school is Information Systems, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that information interests me so much. Applying it to the business world interests me even more. I mean, how can people expect to optimize their company if they have no idea what’s going on? Often, management has a depth of experience in their field that can cover it up and make it seem like they’re doing OK. Then, out of the blue, a competitor comes along that isn’t faking it: they have the right information at the right time to make the right decisions. All of a sudden that first company, the one without the information, just can’t compete.

That sounds a lot like what Business Intelligence systems are for (the subject of my team’s first place win at Cal Poly Pomona), but it goes deeper than that. I guess at some point it seems like there is a battle to be waged between intuition and information. I’m sure there have been many such a battle fought already, but it seems like it will become more prevalent as information is recognized as a key success factor. It certainly helps that data is becoming easier to collect and aggregate. CEOs and top level management seem to advocate large doses of intuition. Jack Welch, previous CEO of GE, certainly advocates as much in Jack: Straight from the Gut.

I view this battle of intuition vs information as one of the key problems that will face companies here in the near future. It may not be splayed across newspaper headlines that “APPLE IN INFORMATION VS INTUITION CRISIS” but it’ll be there, bubbling beneath the surface.