At my core, I am a salesperson. I can be easily distracted bynew technologies, innovative ideas, and dataanalytics. For many years, I was relegated to getting my innovationfix in places outside my industry. But times, they area-changing.

At industry events, booths formerly sponsored by carriers havebeen replaced by tech vendors, new transparency tools, wellnessstrategies, and tax schemes designed to reduce tax liability andused to fund other products.

For the last five years or so, an innovative, successfulconsultant could gain clients by bringing new ideas to the table,but now, some consultants are losing business by bringing too manyor unproven ideas to their customers. This is a warning to not bedistracted by all the “new ideas,” but still be careful enough tobring the right ideas to clients.

Paralysis by analysis is the state of many benefitsprofessionals. Unsure how to proceed when it comes to offeringbenefit administration, HR technology, ACA reporting and more totheir clients results in a state of doing nothing. Paradox ofchoice, as laid out by Barry Schwartz, reminds us that the morechoices we have, the worse decisions we make, sometimes making nodecision at all.

The difficulty in evaluating all of these tools and technologiesis that we can easily be swayed to just continue on our presentpath. Our current vendors would prefer that, and in a larger sense,so would the carriers. Despite being negatively impacted by thestatus quo, even employers can be very hesitant to change.

I spoke on a panel about transparency this past April. I said“consumer-driven” health plans are a farce andmisnomer. Going to a high-deductible health plan does absolutely nogood for driving consumerism when the employer doesn't combine itwith powerful tools for accurately comparing costs and quality, aswell as educating employees on how to do that. If a patient cannotaccurately shop price and quality, they cannot be a good consumer,which leads to delaying care, resulting in larger claims, morepressure on the rates, and therefore, decisions to further dilutebenefits. It's a vicious cycle.

After the talk, a VP of HR approached me. She said they wereconsidering going to all HDHP plans because their currentconsultant suggested it alone would drive consumerism. Apparently,my scenario resonated and we continued to chat after the conferenceended. She was the right person at the right time to hear the ideasI was talking about. Finding the right audience is veryimportant.

At some point, however, you also need to take a chance. Once youhave evaluated as best you can, figured out the message and resultsyou expect, and have in hand the best available tool to help youdeliver that, at some point, you just need to take a leap and goall in.