Decisive: How to Make Better Choices in Life and Work

For instance, most of us have used a pro and con list in the past to make an important decision. This simple technique, credited to Benjamin Franklin, requires that you create a list of positives, and a list of negatives, surrounding a decision. You cross out factors that have a similar weight or importance, and ideally you're left with one side of the list longer than the other.

Sounds simple and effective, right? Well according to the authors, this popular technique is profoundly flawed because it relies on what they call "narrow framing." Research shows that when we use this technique we rely on personal biases that skew our ability to make a good decision. You'll learn all about narrow framing in this book, and the authors provide plenty of practical strategies to help you overcome it.

Chip Heath is a professor at the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University. Dan Heath is a senior fellow at Duke University's Center for the Advancement of Social Entrepreneurship. They're the best-selling authors of "Switch" and "Made to Stick" – and you can find reviews of both of these books on the Mind Tools site.

Like their two other best-sellers, "Decisive" is based on the most recent research into decision-making, psychology, and human nature. If you've read either of their previous books, you'll already know how fun and informative their writing style is. This is a book that you'll be hard-pressed to put down once you crack it open. It's full of pop culture references and case studies that span human history.

It's also the kind of book that can lead to some pretty interesting discussions with your colleagues, boss, or clients. The strategies and research you learn here will transform the way you make decisions – and help you show others how to make better decisions too.

So, keep listening to hear about a common mistake you may be making in your work decisions, how forcing counter arguments can help your organization make better decisions, and one question you can ask to stop bickering and get everyone working together.

The book is based on the authors' four-step decision-making process, called WRAP – W. R. A. P. This stands for Widen Your Options, Reality Test Your Assumptions, Attain Distance Before Deciding, and Prepare to Be Wrong. Each of these steps has its own section in the book, filled with strategies and tips.

The book opens with a mountain of evidence on just how bad human beings are at making decisions. The authors next talk about the four "villains," or common mistakes, that derail good decision-making.

With many decisions, people draw a quick conclusion about a situation and then look for information that bolsters that belief. This is called confirmation bias.

Here's an example of what confirmation bias looks like. Back in the 1960s, information was less clear about the harmful effects of smoking. One study showed that smokers were more interested in reading an article titled, "Smoking Does Not Lead to Lung Cancer," than they were in reading an article titled "Smoking Leads to Lung Cancer."

Put simply, many of us are more interested in information that confirms something we know, or want to believe.

It looks like we're collecting data. But we seek out information that supports our preexisting attitudes, even if we don't realize that's what we're doing. According to one researcher, confirmation bias is the single biggest problem in business, because even top leaders do it.

In this first chapter the authors go into each of the four major flaws – or villains – in our decision-making. There's some intriguing research here, and it's fascinating to see how each of these flaws plays out in real life. You find out why Intel made the right decision to get out of memory chips, and why Decca Records succumbed to overconfidence when they passed on signing the Beatles early on in their career.

You also discover why rock band Van Halen's decadent insistence on no brown M and M candies backstage was actually a brilliant move to ensure their safety on stage during performances.

The authors' four steps to better decision-making were created to counteract the four villains we can fall prey to when making a decision.

Let's look at the first step, Widen Your Options.

The authors start out by explaining the villain that goes hand-in-hand with this step, narrow framing.

When we engage in narrow framing, it's like we shine a spotlight on the situation or decision we're making. The problem with spotlights is that they only show a very narrow slice of the stage. Other options or considerations go unexplored because we're only looking at what is lit up. We narrow our options, and most of the time we don't even realize we're doing it.

One researcher spent 30 years carefully collecting and analyzing business decisions. His study, published in 1993, found that teams considered more than one alternative only 29 percent of the time.

Most of the time, teams are really pursuing only a single option. Do what they're doing, or try this one other thing. Other questions, like "Is there a better way?" are often ignored. This is why it's so important to widen your options.

Here's a common example of what this looks like. Imagine you're buying a car, and you're trying to decide between an entry-level model, and the next one up that's 15 percent more expensive. You're agonizing over features, quality, engine torque, and the like, and you can't decide which model is best.

Imagine the salesperson walks over and says, "Well, think of it this way. Would you rather have a slightly nicer car, or would you rather have an economical car and use that extra saving to take your family on a really nice vacation?"

With that one question, the salesperson just widened your options. Your spotlight just expanded to consider things that weren't part of the equation just a moment before.

You can also use the Vanishing Options Test to consider more options. To use this in your next decision, imagine that you cannot, under any circumstances, use any of the options you're currently considering. What else could you do?

The authors stress that you're not considering all your options in a decision when you use the term "whether or not." This sounds like, "I don't know whether or not to fire my assistant," or, "I'm not sure whether or not to apply for this promotion." So when you hear that phrase in your thoughts or conversations, see it as a red flag and use one of these strategies.

Part two looks at the next step in the authors' model, Reality-Test Your Assumptions.

One big mistake many people make when it comes to decisions is they avoid disagreement or skepticism. This is especially true in leadership teams. There's often a lot of pressure to go along with the top leader's decision and not criticize or raise concerns. But this lack of disagreement can lead organizations to make some really costly mistakes.

A good way to overcome this is to assign a few people on the team to be devil's advocate. Their only job is to create a case against a proposed decision. This kind of counter argument can be invaluable in high stakes decisions.

The problem with this strategy is that sometimes politics can creep in and affect the decision.

So what can you do about that?

If a decision-making meeting dissolves into political bickering, get everyone to stop talking. And, ask this question for each of the options on the table: "What would have to be true for this option to be the right answer?"

This one question reframes the discussion because everyone has to get involved and collaborate to find the answer for each option under consideration. Instead of the debate being "us against them," the question treats each option equally, even the unpopular ones. Everyone can back away from their roles or beliefs, and focus on what it would take for each single option to work.

Another way you can do a reality test on your decisions is to zoom in, zoom out.

Stop and think about what you do before you book a hotel room or buy a new digital camera. Chances are you hop online to look at reviews first, right? It just makes sense to see the comments of other people who've already had this experience. And, their feedback helps you make a better choice.

When we look for reviews we acknowledge that we don't have all the information, and that it's smarter to trust the opinions of others who have the experience we lack. The problem is that we don't do this with other types of decisions.

Here's a good example. Before you accept a job offer, wouldn't it make sense to talk to other people who held that same job in the past, or who are in a similar role now?

But we often don't consider outside impressions when we make personal decisions like this.

Here's another real-life example from the book. Daniel Kahneman, a Nobel-Prize winning psychologist, collaborated with some of his colleagues to write a textbook on judgment and decision-making. They were the first people in the faculty to develop a course on these subjects, so they asked the dean, a curriculum expert, to be part of the team.

After they'd all been working together for a while, one Friday they were talking about how groups think about the future. Kahneman thought they should look at how they personally think about the future, so he asked everyone on the team to estimate how much time they thought it would take to finish this curriculum. Everyone's estimates, including the dean's, were between one and a half and two years.

Kahneman then looked at the dean, who had coached several other teams through writing a curriculum from scratch. And he asked him, "How long did it take those other teams to finish?"

According to the dean, 40 percent of the teams he'd coached in the past never finished at all. The other groups that did finish took 7-10 years.

In the end, their team took eight years to write the curriculum.

This is a good example of what happens when we take an inside view of a situation. It's human nature to think that our situation is special and unique, or that we're somehow more gifted than others who went before us. But the majority of the time, this isn't true.

This is why it's important to take an outside view of the situation, and talk to experts or people who've already gone through the decision you're trying to make.

The third step in better decision making is Attain Distance Before Deciding. Here you learn how to overcome the trap of letting short-term emotions affect your decision.
One way to do this is to use the ten-ten-ten rule, invented by writer Suzy Welch, which the authors outline in the book. Here, you think about the decision in three time frames. How will you feel about this decision ten minutes from now? In ten months? In ten years?

This is a quick way to get some distance from your decision because it forces you to look at the short and long-term effects. You can hear a review of Welch's book, called "10-10-10," in the Book Insights section of the Mind Tools site.

The authors point out that short-term emotions aren't always the enemy of good decision making. If you see an injustice, then your immediate outrage is warranted and often useful in making things right. But in most cases, the short-term emotions you're feeling around a decision can slow down and impair your ability to make the right choice.

In this chapter there's a fascinating section about how easily we trust things we're familiar with. Here, you learn why the mere exposure to an idea, over time, can make you think it's trustworthy. And, the authors provide plenty of advice on how to avoid this common pitfall.

The last section in the book is Prepare to be Wrong. Here, you learn how to expand and stretch your ideas about what the future might bring, so you can consider all possibilities. The authors teach you how to use a strategy called bookending to do this.

So, what's our last word on "Decisive?"

Hands down, we loved this book. It's fascinating, fun, and full of practical, useful information. It's obvious from the start the authors have a personal interest in this topic, and they go out of their way to find case studies and research that holds your interest and solidly backs up the points they make throughout the book.

We've only covered a small fraction of the tips, case studies, and strategies the authors include. Their advice is simple and practical, and it's easy to start using it in your own life.

What's more, this book is really fun to read. This topic is important to every human being, from the high school senior trying to choose the best college to the CEO trying to decide whether or not to acquire another company. We can easily recommend it to everyone.

"Decisive," by Chip Heath and Dan Heath, is published by Crown Business.

That's the end of this episode of Book Insights. Thanks for listening.