Choice will destroy us

Henry Ford’s famous words, “You can have any colour you like, as long as its black” of the Model T in 1919 – 1925 are a far cry from the reality of car buying today. Black, red, green, silver, white, blue, even gold are common colour choices for the cars we drive. And we’re told that choice is important. It helps us to maintain our individuality, to show off our personalities, to feel we have more agency because we have made a personal, considered decision.

But sometimes too much choice is a bad thing. And the problem with choice, according to Geetie Singh-Watson and Guy Singh-Watson during their fireside chat at Blue Earth, is that there is an expectation that those making decisions can fully understand the implications and ramifications. This is a challenge. If we’re enabling the consumer to make more sustainable choices for instance, as a business, it’s too easy to assume that the consumer has the right knowledge to make an informed decision.

So where should the responsibility lie? With the business? With the consumer? Or with someone else?

A great example of a business taking responsibility is Boston Tea Party, a family run coffee shop chain, who banned single use coffee cups in 2018. Take away coffee is now available by bringing your own cup, renting a cup, or buying one. Boston Tea Party took the decision out of the hands of the customer, because they knew as a business that reuse is better than single use.

At the other end of the spectrum, if you as a consumer want to buy some air freighted bananas as the only item on your Deliveroo order, to turn up in 15 minutes, you can do that. The choice is there. It’ll cost a lot of carbon, but you can choose that if you so wish.

This is why choice will destroy us.

As consumers, we’re often not making decisions armed with all the right information to guide us to the best choice – and what does the ‘best’ choice even mean? Another post on that later…. We’re often making decisions based on what’s best for us, led by convenience, price, desirability and other factors. It’s not for the consumer to decide what’s best for our planet, our communities. They might do, but it’s no guarantee. And I believe that should be the job of the businesses we buy from. The best businesses I’ve worked with have understood their role in giving consumers choices that consider people and planet as well as convenience, price etc. Take Ask Italian’s roll out of 100% Wildfarmed regenerative flour into their pizza dough. The consumer didn’t ask for that. But ASK knew that growing and processing wheat and flour with regenerative farming principles will secure their future dough – pun intended.

If you’re a business leader reading this, take a moment to think about the choices you enable your customers to have and the inevitable, knock-on impact of those choices. If we want to enjoy businesses that thrive in the long term, we need to present our customers with choices that enable that to happen.