Decisive by Chip Heath

Decisive by Chip Heath

4 villains
1. Narrow framing
2. Confirmation bias
3. Short-term emotion
4. Overconfidence

Usual procedure:
- you encounter a choice
- you analyse your options
- you make a choice
- then you live with it

- (you encounter a choice) narrow framing makes you miss options
#WIDEN YOUR OPTIONS#

- (you analyse your options) confirmation bias leads you to gather self-serving info
#REALITY-TEST YOUR ASSUMPTIONS#

- (you make a choice)
short-term emotion tempt you to make the wrong option
#ATTAIN DISTANCE BEFORE DECIDING#

- (you live with it)
you will often be overconfident about how the future will unfold
#PREPARED TO BE WRONG#

WRAP -- using the process forces you to switch from auto-spotlight mode (most accessible and recent info automatically become more important) to manual spotlight mode (looking and correctly frame information)


WIDENING OF OPTIONS

Widening of options
-- Distrust "whether or not" decisions
-- Think of opportunity cost
-- you won't think up additional alternatives if you aren't aware you're neglecting them
-- focusing is great for analysing alternatives but terrible for spotting them
-- Vanishing options test

Multi tracking -- considering more than one option SIMULTANEOUSLY

Multi tracking keeps egos in check and gives a better landscape view of the problem

Not too many options -> leading to decision paralysis

Prevention focus = avoiding negative outcome
Promotion focus =
Pursuing positive outcome

Adding promotion mindset to prevention mindset or vice versa will encourage a shift in "spotlight" and reveal more options.

Push for "this AND that" rather than "this OR that"

Find someone who has solved your problem:
- look outside (competitive analysis, benchmarking, best practices)
- look inside (for bright spots) and try multiply the bright spots
- ladder up via analogies


REALITY-TEST YOUR ASSUMPTIONS

Confirmation bias = hunting for info that confirms our initial assumptions

3 ways to fight against confirmation bias:

-- invite constructive disagreement by making it easier for people to disagree with us
-- ask "disconfirming" questions = questions that are more likely to surface contrary info
-- become the "opposition" = consider the opposite, make mistakes deliberately

ZOOM OUT
Trust the Average (base rates) --
We should trust outside view (=how things generally unfold in situations like ours) more than inside view (=our evaluation of our specific situation)

If you can't find base rates, ask experts to help you estimate base rates (NOT predicting your success rate)

ZOOM IN
A close-up can add texture that's missing from outside view
#Note that Zoom-in is NOT taking an "inside view"

OOCH
Ooching=running small experiments to test our theories

Why try to predict when we can ooch?

Ooching should be used as a way to speed up the collection of trustworthy info, not as a way to slow down a decision that deserves our full commitment.


ATTAIN DISTANCE BEFORE DECIDING

Overcome short-term emotion by attaining some distance

10/10/10 forces us to consider future emotions as much as present ones. It's irrelevant whether our future emotions are correct or not, the crux is to remove the over-focus on short-term emotions

Our decisions are often altered by 2 subtle short-term emotions:
(1) mere exposure=we like what's familiar
(2) loss aversion=losses are more painful than gains are pleasant

(1)+(2)= status quo bias

Take an observer's perspective 旁�者清
-- what would I tell my friend to do in this situation?

Honour your core priorities
-- identifying and enshrining your core priorities will allow easy resolution of present Nd future dilemmas

Knowing is not the same as doing. Need to carve out space to pursue our core priorities

PREPARE TO BE WRONG

The future is not a "point" forecast but a "range". No point predicting the point as the likelihood is you will miss the forecast. It is best to consider the range

Bookend the future
-- When we think about the extremes, we stretch our sense of what's possible, and the expanded range better reflects reality

Pre-mortem (lower bookend) and Pre-parade (higher bookend)
-- Prospective hindsight seems to spur more insights because it forces us to fill in the blanks between today and a certain future event

Use a safety factor to prepare for unforeseen future

Anticipating the range of future allows us to prepare, prevent, and cope with the outcome.

Tripwire -- needed to jolt us out of unconscious routines and make us aware that we have a choice to make

At some point, the virtue of being persistent turns into the vice of denying reality

Types of tripwires::
Deadlines give reminders
Partitions set boundaries

Tripwires remind us that we have a choice to make

Decision making Process

Decisions made by groups must've seen as fair

Allow for "bargaining" will not only improve the decision making process (more options, vanishing option, reality testing, .. ), but will also encourage buy-in and the decision will likely be seen as a fair outcome

Groups must trust that the process is just

Success emerges from the quality of the decisions we make and the quantity of luck we receive