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Notes on Decisive

By Thu Nguyen

http://www.bloggingfor.info

Read more about the book at:

http://heathbrothers.com/books/decisive/

Presented by Dan Heath

May 16, 2013, Chicago, IL, 3PM

The 4 Part Process

Widen Your Options

Reality-Test Your Assumptions

Attain Distance Before Deciding

Prepare To Be Wrong

How can we stop the cycle of agonizing over our decisions?

How can we make group decisions w/o destructive politics?

How can we ensure that we don’t overlook precious

opportunities to change our course?

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Intro

Profound choices

Ex: Smoot-Hawley Tariff

There are more bad

decisions than good:

Retirement

Tattoo removal

Love

Medical

Birdwatching and now … Angry Birds

What’s wrong?

How can we do better?

Both professionally and personally

It’s practical

Not complex with confusing spreadsheets/analysis

We need a process to protect us from the traps.

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The Villians of Decision-Making

o Narrow Framing

o Confirmation Bias

o Short-Term Emotion

o Overconfidence

The solution to each villain is found through WRAP.

The WRAP Process

Widen Your Options

Reality-Test Assumptions

Attain Some Distance

Prepare To Be Wrong

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Widen Your Options

Quaker buying Snapple

(see older campaigns)

Studied teenager’s decision

Whether ‘or’ not

Paul Nutt research with organizational decisions

Only 29% considered alternatives (narrow framing)

What to do to widen your options?

Fall in love twice!

Think ‘and’ not ‘or’

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Reality-Test Assumptions

When something goes wrong, you’ll often ask yourself:

How could something like this happen?

The confirmation bias seeks for data to support you

rather than data that contradicts.

Data That Supports

Me

Data That Contradicts

Me

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Dan’s story with getting funding for Thinkwell …

His advisor’s advice:

Nobody’s going to tell you that your baby is ugly.

Most of the time, you think you’re looking for truth,

but it’s assurance.

Data doesn’t help.

You’ll ‘cook the books.’

How to counteract ‘cooking the books’

Ooching (try it)

Test, not guess

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Attain Some Distance

Trust your gut (a common advice)

Dan’s Cheesecake Factory story

The Ultimate Red Velvet Cake for dessert

= 3 McD’s cheeseburger + a pack of Skittles

Trust your gut?

Harry Potter book idea

Rejected 7 times before it was published

Did these publishers trust their gut?

Listen to your gut but stay skeptical

Short-term is unreliable

Long-term more reliable

Think about it this way:

Emotions that fade and emotions that lasts

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Ex: Calling someone you’ve only spoke with once

You versus your friend’s advice

You waiting versus your friend’s idea to call

The Power of Advice

Ourselves – we get lost in the trees

Friends – we see the forest

Get your quick answers

Ask yourself:

What would you tell your best friend to do?

If you were fired or replaced what would you tell your successor?

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Prepare To Be Wrong

Motion once maintained stays in orbit

Decisions made also stay made

Learn to snap awake at the right moments

A warning light Tripwires (time to act)

Case Study: David Lee Roth of Van Halen

Strategically made concert operations safety public

This improved engineering and sound checks

Same time when Michael Jackson’s hair set on fire

The M&M tripwire

Article 126 in contract – ‘no brown M&Ms’

If found, a complete line check was required

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Last Thoughts

Decisions when wrong

It’s predictable

Awareness doesn’t work

The Process

Becomes a safety road

A harness

Makes you bolder

Email Dan Heath at dan@heathbrothers.com.

Decision

(Predictions)

Tripwire

(Triggers)