The one-sentence summary

You can make better choices by widening your options, testing your assumptions, attaining distance before deciding, and preparing to be wrong.

WHAT THE BOOK SAYS DECISIVE

· You can make better choices in life and work by following four simple principles (as ever, they encapsulate these in a mnemonic, WRAP)

· Widen your options

· Reality-Test your assumptions

· Attain distance before deciding

· Prepare to be wrong

· Stage 1 means avoiding a narrow time frame, multitracking (considering more than one option simultaneously), and finding someone who has already solved your problem.

· Stage 2 involves considering doing the opposite, zooming in and zooming out (big picture and detail), and ooching (a Southern US word for running small experiments to test theories).

· Stage 3 includes overcoming short-term emotion and honouring your core priorities.

· Stage 4 is bookending the future (setting a range of outcomes from very bad to very good) and setting up tripwires.

WHAT’S GOOD ABOUT IT

· It’s another good synthesis of all things behavioural, well laid out with clear chapter summaries that you can grab.

· If you are a well-adjusted individual, you can navigate yourself through poor choices:

~ You encounter a choice – don’t let narrow framing exclude decent options.

~ You analyze your options – don’t let confirmation bias make you gather only self-serving information.

~ You make a choice – don’t let short-term emotion tempt you into the wrong one.

~ You live with it – don’t let overconfidence about the future warp your view.

· There is a decent blend of corporate and personal examples, and the narrative rolls along well, as ever with these authors.

WHAT YOU HAVE TO WATCH

· Pretty much all of this has been discussed before elsewhere:

~ Framing has been covered extensively by Daniel Kahneman and others.

~ Ooching is the same as ‘First bullets, then cannonballs’ from Jim Collins.

~ Zooming in and out was also posited by Collins in Great by Choice.

~ The premortem (envisioning a disastrous outcome) was originated by Gary Klein.

~ …and tripwires were first suggested by me in Tick Achieve in 2008 (!)