Decisive by Chip and Dan Heath - review

I posted earlier about Decisive, by Chip and Dan Heath.  Actually that post was really a link to a thorough summary and if you are looking for a summary of the book you should check out that post.

I've generally enjoyed the other books by Dan and Chip Heath.  Switch is probably one of my favorite books and I recommend it often to others.  I also liked Made to Stick and found some useful tips in it which I think have improved my ability to communicate. (I think it ought to be required reading for Pastors).

In both of these books and now Decisive, the Heaths tackle a complex subject and attempt to reduce it to a formula.  Because I am analytical by nature this appeals to me.  I like to believe that almost everything can be reduced to a formula, if you can just figure out the right components.   Switch certainly accomplished this in my mind and I feel the information and the formulas provided are useful paradigms for confronting my world.

In Decisive, however, I'm not as convinced.  To find the right formula for making decisions is a complex process and the Heaths' have provided some components which certainly seem to be part of a formula,  The problem is that making decisions is so complex to begin with and while there are some commonalities there are also distinctive components which defy the ability to put it into a formula.  I had a friend who always used to say to me "Hindsight is always 20/20." and that's what this book feels like.  Looking back I can spot where I should have thought of "this" and did "that" and I had done so I would have definitely made a better decision in the long run . . . but I didn't, even though I did think of "that" and did "this," which at the time I thought was the right thing to do

Still, there are some interesting techniques in this book which I will incorporate into my decision making process, and perhaps that is all the authors were striving for in the first place.  Things like:

• Avoid a narrow frame:  don't neglect other options outside the narrow frame of obvious options
• Find someone else who has solved your problem (or a similar one) and adapt their solutions
• Consider the opposite of your initial instinct
• Ooch: "construct small experiments to test one's hypothesis." 
• Overcome short-term emotion: "We need to downplay sort-term emotion in favor of long-term values and passions."  Use Suzy Welch's model of 10/10/10 (How will we feel about the decision in 10 minutes? in 10 months? in 10 years?)
• Honor your core priorities.  - For me this might be the most important one for reasons cited in earlier posts
• Bookend the future:  Think about the worst case scenario (one bookend) and the best case scenario (other bookend) and the ramifications of each so that you won't be totally surprised when either happens.  I have a friend who likes to say to his subordinates, "Does that surprise you?" meaning if you had followed this process you would have prepared for the worst and the best and not be caught off-guard.
• Set a tripwire.  This concept of  setting deadlines or partitions is pretty much second nature to me at this point but still a useful concept if you aren't aware of how to do it.

Overall, I'd say it was worth reading, however, it doesn't flow as well as the other two books and probably won't have the same impact on the large scale, however, implementing even one of these techniques could have a profound impact on an individual's life.