Decisive: How to make better choices in life and work

by Chip Heath

You want to encourage people to use their judgment, but you also need your team members’ judgments to be correct and consistent.

Define and enshrine your core priorities.

How can we prepare ourselves for both good and bad outcomes?

how would we know if it were time to reconsider our decision?

Agonizing decisions are often a sign of a conflict among your core priorities.

the leaders of the software projects, aware of the developers’ overconfidence, have learned to tack on a “buffer” factor

By exposing people to a “small dose of organizational reality” before they start work, you vaccinate them against shock and disappointment.

As a manager, you could use a realistic job preview to help “vaccinate” the new hires at your organization.

Anticipating problems helps us cope with them.

tripwires at least ensure that we are aware it’s time to make a decision,

it’s easy to forget that most of the deadlines we encounter in life are simply made up. They are artificially created tripwires to force an action or a decision.

A tripwire can snap us awake and make us realize we have a choice.

Tripwires can be especially useful when change is gradual.

Tripwires can actually create a safe space for risk taking. They: (1) cap risk; and (2) quiet your mind until the trigger is hit.

Throughout the book, we’ve discussed ways of nudging, prodding, and inspiring groups to make better decisions: Seeking out one more option. Finding someone else who’s solved our problem. Asking, “What would have to be true for you to be right?” Ooching as a way to dampen politics. Making big decisions based on core priorities. Running premortems and preparades. Laying down tripwires.

When you’ve got multiple powerful parties involved in a decision, compromise is unavoidable.

compromise can be valuable in itself, because it demonstrates that you’ve made use of diverse opinions,

A manager’s self-criticism is comforting, rather than anxiety producing, because it signals that she is making a reality-based decision.

Success emerges from the quality of the decisions we make and the quantity of luck we receive.

What a process provides, though, is more inspiring: confidence.

Decisions made by groups have an additional burden: They must be seen as fair.

http://www.heathbrothers.com/

One-Page Overview. A printable overview of the WRAP framework, perfect for tacking up next to your desk.

The Decisive Workbook. A collection of tips and suggestions for putting into practice the ideas in this book.

Decisive Book Club Guide. If you’re reading Decisive as part of a book club, this guide offers suggested questions and topics for your discussion.

Daniel Kahneman (2011). Thinking, Fast and Slow.

Michael A. Roberto (2009). Know What You Don’t Know: How Great Leaders Prevent Problems Before They Happen.

A good decision can’t be assessed by the outcome,

For kids of a certain age, parents are genetically disqualified as advisers.