Choice is toxic

Choice isn't something that the primal parts of our simple human brains understand very well.

Imagine its July 8th, 7:03am, 13,654 BC

You're cold, filthy and hungry. You’re being chased by a lion. You stumble across a juniper berry tree. You desperately need food to sustain your flight but your favourite fruit is raspberries….

Do you have an existential issue about the "choice" on offer?

When I hear second rate NHS managers and socially awkward politicians talk about "choice" in the NHS I get very nervous. "Choice" for most technocrats more often than not equals wiggle room. “Choice” allows many of those who choose to govern to muddy the clear waters around the inadequacy of specific, individual services, by allowing them to use the best of what is on offer, to obscure the worst.

As a for instance, lets take my nearest A&E department. As a consumer of government services, I need that one to be good. It is of no use to me to be told I have a “choice” of 3 in my area - that the one 5 miles further away is better than my nearest. The provision of “choice” might help a politician answer awkward questions on radio 4. It rarely helps individuals in specific circumstances faced with an alarming range in the quality of basic services.

There isn't much of a choice with Apple. Apple don't make the iPhone 4D and the iPhone 5TXd and iPhone 8PS14 extreme.

They make the iPhone 4 - that's it - that's the standard – there is only 1 new model at any one time and as a consequence anything else looks rather second rate and flabby - precisely because of the lack of choice .

Blackberry - lots of choice..

And their respective shareprice....

oh......


The service of a tailor makes the critical assumption that customers without the looks and figure of a supermodel are prepared to pay more, specifically not to be given a choice. To be free from its tyranny.

No... Loren. You look like a monstrous, overweight, lipid whale in that cropped top.

Yes I know [insert the name of whichever demented, dumbo D lister was doing the rounds on Richard and Judy last week] was wearing one.....but  Loren - she's a size 6, and eats the calorific equivalent of an Atkins Ant diet every day.

Where as you love.....You consume a truckers diet every 6 hours. Which means the ripples of fat pouring from between the little number weaved by 3rd world ophans you picked up in New Look and the jeggings you bought 4 years ago, which (to be fair) didn't fit you that well then (and that was 4 stone ago) - all mean your gut looks like its requesting triglyceride independence.

The antidote to the toxicity of choice is simplicity, curation and trust.

A tailor is a simple proposition. She makes better fitting clothes by making them to the exact body measurement of an individual.

Through years of dedicated learning she is expert in understanding what I should, and should not wear given my specific age, height, weight, hair and skin colour.

Because she has consistently delivered for me and others I know, I trust her.

That is why I'm so excited about one of the MVPs we released last week from Fluxx labs called www.ijustwantawhiteboard.com

It is, to be fair, "only" a whiteboard ordering service (although try building an end to end whiteboard ordering service in 3 days - not easy - especially when you commit to only working 8 hrs a day and having a work life balance.) It is the principles which underpin it which make it so interesting. Google "buy large whiteboard" and you will begin to understand why, for whiteboards and many, many other commoditised products in life, a service that eliminates choice is so badly needed.

Ultimately "ijustwant" stands for a new economic age. A new Victorian era of trial and error. Where the niche interests of amorphous groups of users, are served by highly flexible organisation who cater to a groups evolving needs by mining behavioural and psychocultural insights of user on a day by day.