Make the Right Choice with Dan Heath's Decisive Decisions

Mr K Khan: The book is easy to read & understand. I would say its more catered to corporate decisions, although, there are examples of personal decisions and techniques to apply to make better judgment.

United Kingdom on Oct 26, 2022

Kindle Customer: As decided to improve the skills of decision making, this book provided me with the right insights that I noted down and use dailly every time I need to make a decision, and I can say that really works..!

Netherlands on Jul 13, 2022

Ipe: This is my 2nd book written by the Heath's brother after Made to Stick. Didn't disappoint me with great examples and insightful stories. Very easy to read and understand.

I always feel stressful with decision making and this book helps me immensely in both personal and business perspectives. The WRAP practice is what I am trying to follow.

Canada on Dec 17, 2020

Wally Bock: Chip and Dan Heath open their book, Decisive: How to Make Better Choices in Life and Work describing a woman considering whether to fire her firm’s IT Director. They ask you to reflect on your mental activity as you read their description. Next, they tell you what you probably did. They nailed that part for me. Finally, they show you why what you did, and what most people do, may not lead result in good decisions.

Here’s a summary of the book’s subject in two quotes from the introduction.

“Kahneman says that we are quick to jump to conclusions because we give too much weight to the information that’s right in front of us, while failing to consider the information that’s just offstage. He called this tendency “what you see is all there is.” In keeping with Kahneman’s visual metaphor, we’ll refer to this tendency as a “spotlight” effect. (Think of the way a spotlight in a theater directs our attention; what’s inside the spotlight is crisply illuminated.)”

And

“And that, in essence, is the core difficulty of decision making: What’s in the spotlight will rarely be everything we need to make a good decision, but we won’t...

United States on Dec 18, 2018

Fabrizio Bocci: Le giuste decisioni, prese al momento giusto, possono fare la differenza, sia sul lavoro che nella vita privata. Perché allora, quando dobbiamo prendere una decisione, ci lasciamo condizionare da una serie di fattori irrazionali e di convinzioni preconcette che possono minare una corretta valutazione di tutti gli elementi che possono contribuire alla bontà della scelta che dobbiamo operare?

Lo studio del processo decisionale è tra i più affascinanti. La letteratura sull’argomento è molto vasta ed è difficile selezionare i contributi più preziosi. Nel campo manageriale si riduce spesso alla proposta di ricette preconfezionate, poco supportate da una rigorosa ricerca in merito. Gli autori di questo libro fanno riferimento alle ricerche più avanzate nel settore per inquadrare il problema ed avanzare una serie di proposte per migliorare la qualità del nostro processo decisionale, corredando le considerazioni con numerosi esempi chiarificatori (forse troppi).

In sintesi, per gli autori, il processo decisionale si articola in quattro passaggi:

ci si trova nelle condizioni di operare una scelta o di dover prendere una decisione
si analizzano le varie...

Italy on Jun 23, 2015

Steve H: If you are looking for a book that is on the deep theory behind decision science, computational methods or analytics then this probably is not for you.

However if you are looking for a text that could become a well thumbed guide to help you make better decisions or help others to make better decisions then this could be very helpful.

One of the few books that has a clearly defined process on how to make better decisions along with analysis about why we make poor decisions, based on well researched and current thinking from a wide range of fields. It brings together a whole collection of techniques & approaches under a very simple and memorable acronym of WRAP, For those who need more theory extensive end notes and bibliography could be very helpful in deeper searches. The authors intent is that more and more people make better decisions in work, life & society and after reading this book I think many will.

Only one negative for me...its so filled with content its a chunky book...but then maybe I need to make a better decision to buy a kindle.

United Kingdom on Jul 31, 2013

Mike Mertens: I highly recommend Decisive as a valuable aid to making more objective decisions. The Heath Brothers do a great job laying out a better and more memorable process for making decisions while illustrating the principles with a wide variety of examples. They begin by discussing how the normal decision making process proceeds in 4 steps, each of which has a "villain" that can negatively impact it. To quote from their introduction:
* You encounter a choice. But narrow framing makes you miss options.
* You analyze your options. But the confirmation bias leads you to gather self-serving information.
* You make a choice. But short-term emotion will often tempt you to make the wrong one.
* Then you live with it. But you'll often be overconfident about how the future will unfold

They spend the remainder of the book detailing a process to make better decisions - the WRAP process:
* Widen your options
* Reality Test Your Assumptions
* Attain Some Distance
* Prepare to Be Wrong

Each part of the process has several powerful ideas that are worth chewing on and implementing in the context of one's life. I have chosen a few of the ideas to give you a flavor of...

United States on Mar 26, 2013