Decisive: How to Make Better Choices in Life and Work

by Chip Heath

1. When you need more options but feel stuck, look for someone who’s solved your problem. 2. Look outside: competitive analysis, benchmarking, best practices. • Sam Walton discovered an ingenious checkout solution by scoping out another store. 3. Look inside. Find your bright spots. • Kaiser’s leaders found and scaled a solution for sepsis pioneered by one of Kaiser’s own hospitals. • What can you learn from your own bright spots (e.g., the four days you went to the gym last month)? 4. Note: To be proactive, encode your greatest hits in a decision “playlist.” • A checklist stops people from making an error; a playlist stimulates new ideas. • Advertisers Hughes and Johnson use a playlist to spark lots of creative ideas quickly. • A playlist for budget cuts might include a prompt to switch between the prevention and promotion mindsets: Can you cut more here to invest more there? 5. A third place to look for ideas: in the distance. Ladder up via analogies. • Kevin Dunbar: Analogies are a pillar of scientific problem solving. Scientists make progress through analogies to similar experiments and similar organisms. • Ladder up: Lower rungs show close analogies (low risk and low novelty), while higher rungs reveal more distant solutions (higher risk and higher novelty). • Fiona Fairhurst designed a speedier swimsuit by laddering up and analyzing “anything that moves fast,” including sharks and torpedoes. 6. Why gene...