Less Is More: Decision Overload In Leadership

Episode notes

Learn how to escape decision overload and why chasing more projects, more initiatives, and more ideas can quietly erode your impact as a leader. Research on the 'less-is-better' effect shows that people often value a smaller, higher-quality set of items more than a larger, mixed-quality one, because our brains default to simple, easy-to-judge cues rather than raw quantity. The same pattern shows up in leadership: when executives are overloaded with options and decisions, cognitive bandwidth drops, decision fatigue rises, and the quality of strategic judgement declines. In this episode, we unpack why human psychology does not work like a calculator, how the obsession with 'more' turns your role into a bottleneck, and what it takes to design a leadership portfolio where fewer, better choices create more value.