Decisive: How to Make Better Choices in Life and Work

Chip and Dan Heath open their book, Decisive: How to Make Better Choices in Life and Work describing a woman considering whether to fire her firm’s IT Director. They ask you to reflect on your mental activity as you read their description. Next, they tell you what you probably did. They nailed that part for me. Finally, they show you why what you did, and what most people do, may not lead result in good decisions.Here’s a summary of the book’s subject in two quotes from the introduction.“Kahneman says that we are quick to jump to conclusions because we give too much weight to the information that’s right in front of us, while failing to consider the information that’s just offstage. He called this tendency “what you see is all there is.” In keeping with Kahneman’s visual metaphor, we’ll refer to this tendency as a “spotlight” effect. (Think of the way a spotlight in a theater directs our attention; what’s inside the spotlight is crisply illuminated.)”And“And that, in essence, is the core difficulty of decision making: What’s in the spotlight will rarely be everything we need to make a good decision, but we won’t always remember to shift the light. Sometimes, in fact, we’ll forget there’s a spotlight at all, dwelling so long in the tiny circle of light that we forget there’s a broader landscape beyond it.”Decisive describes how you can make better decisions by following a simple process. The Heaths share research that shows that process is more important than analysis when reaching effective decisions. In fact, a good process can lead to better analysis.They describe what they call the four villains of decision-making. The villains are: narrow framing, confirmation bias, short-term emotion, and overconfidence. They share a four-step process you can use to lessen the effect of the four villains.I like the simple process represented with a few letters. The military does the best job I know of in teaching people how to decide. One key to their method is to define a simple process for analyzing an issue. The Army uses an analysis tool called METT-TC. That stands for: Mission, Enemy, Troops available, Terrain, Time, and Civilian concerns. The simple process helps a decision maker consider all the important factors.The Heaths’ tool is a little different. They use the acronym WRAP. Each letter of the acronym represents a way to deal with one villain of decision-making. W is for “Widen your options.” R stands for “Reality-test your assumptions.” A represents “Attain distance before deciding.” And P is “Prepare to be wrong.”Each of those elements of their process gets several chapters’ worth of coverage. The authors illustrate their points with relevant, well-told business stories, some of which you probably haven’t heard before. The Heaths also introduce several tools you can use to make the process work better. I found tools I was already familiar with, such as pre-mortem. There were tools I knew about but which had slipped away from the front of my memory. An example is Suzy Welch’s 10/10/10. And there were tools I never heard about such as book-ending.In A NutshellDecisive: How to Make Better Choices in Life and Work is one of the best books I’ve read on decision-making. The Heaths created a simple process with an acronym to help you remember it. Then they present an array of tools to help you make the process work. If you want to improve your decision-making, or even if you think you don’t need to, this book is a must-read.

Decisive is structured for clarity and accessibility. Every chapter ends with a one-page synopsis of high points.End notes offer more depth on studies. Readers are cleverly given a choice of how they read the book: fast or slow. Decisive can be scanned by the impatient or read in depth by the reflective.Readers of other popular books on decision making such as Barry Schwartz's excellent "Paradox of Choice" will notice the Heaths use some of the same research. It's disappointing to read about the supermarket jam story yet again.However, if this book is not entirely original, what sets it apart is its presentation and accessibility. After all, their previous book was called "Made to Stick". And they have sensibly followed their own advice.We meet the authors' four villains of decision making:1. narrow framing blinds us to options2. confirmation bias focuses attention on self-serving information3. short-term emotion4. over-confidence.Primary points are made "sticky" with the acronym WRAP:* Widen your options* Reality-test your assumptions* Attain distance before deciding* Prepare to be wrong.Each of these areas is fully unpacked over several chapters.Widening options shows us how making choices with only an on-off switch keeps us from seeing that we can have this AND that. The object is to create more options.After initial selections have been made the next stage is reality-testing assumptions. These include sniffing out any tendency for the confirmation bias. Validity testing includes examining initial assumptions, seeking out conflicting opinions and taking time to explore them. The tripwire is a warning mechanism preventing straying too far from the topic.Decisions are based in feeling. Individuals who suffer from autism can find it particularly hard to make decisions. They fail to recognize and respond to some emotional cues. Unemotional analysis has its place, yet analysis alone is not enough. In the reality testing stage we check in with how we feel about each incremental change.The next stage addresses the tendency for our emotions to run away with us.Attaining distance before deciding is the act of stepping back. This is easier said than done. The idea here is to distance ourselves from our emotional biases. The goal is to take a wider, deeper view. Our choices need to be aligned with our stated priorities.Prepare to be wrong (which I've already mastered). The Heath brothers show how we are often wildly overconfident about the future.They suggest these three fixes to get closer to what actually happens:1. Book-ending the future is a technique for getting closer to the bulls' eye by setting low and high parameters.2. A tripwire is a boundary beyond which you won't go before checking in and correcting course.3. Trust the process: "Trusting a process can permit us to take bigger risks, to make bolder choices. Studies of the elderly show that people regret not what they did but what they didn't do."Concepts are clearly explained, and illustrated with persuasive examples. Who knew that David Lee Roth's fixation with brown M&Ms was all about security?We all need to decide. Deciding to read Decisive shouldn't be a difficult choice.