Decisive: How to Make Better Choices in Life and Work

by Chip Heath

The search for options might lead the manager to search first for best practices. In a world with thousands of other organizations, someone has surely faced this problem before. Next, she might look for bright spots within her own organization, interviewing a couple of longtime managers to fish for their insights. What if she took things a step further and actually encoded what she learned so that the next manager in a similar situation—whether a month or a year down the line—could consult her ready-made list of suggestions? Her list might include thoughts like these: Is there a way you can delegate some of your own higher-level work to the employee? Can you carve out a project that they can lead? Try to find ways to ensure that the employee is recognized publicly for their work. By encoding the advice, she’d be creating a kind of “playlist” of managerial greatest hits: questions to ask, principles to consult, ideas to consider. This playlist idea turns a reactive search—Who has solved my problem?—into a proactive step: We’ve already found the people who have solved this problem, and here’s what they said.