Dan Heath was in town talking about his new book Decisive. Here are notes from the presentation.

1. 1
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?

2. 2
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.

3. 3
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

4. 4
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’

5. 5
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

6. 6
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

7. 7
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

8. 8
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?

9. 9
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

10. 10
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)