Decisive: How to Make Better Choices in Life and Work

1. Dr. Timothy Mitchell Rapid City Area Schools Systems Change 2013 Decisive: How to Make Better Choices in Life and Work

2. Contact Information tim.mitchell@k12.sd.us www.rcas.org

3. Decisive Our decisions will never be perfect, but they can be better, bolder and wiser. The right process can steer us towards the right choice. And the right choice, at the right moment, can make all the difference.

4. Rapid City Journal-Front Page “The Snow Day That Wasn’t”

5. Decisive What could be your “Crossing Guard” dilemma?

6. Decisive “Leadership is about going somewhere. If you and your people don’t know where you are going, your leadership doesn’t matter.” Ken Blanchard

7. Decisive The hardest part of leadership is winning the support for the bold and necessary decisions that define where you want to lead your organization.

8. Why is it so Hard? “There is nothing more difficult to plan, more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to manage than the creation of a new order of things…Whenever his enemies have the ability to attack the innovator they do so with the passion of partisans, while the others defend him sluggishly, so that the innovator and his party alike are vulnerable” Niccolo Machiavelli

9. Normal Decision Making Process 1. You encounter a choice 2. You analyze your options 3. You make a choice 4. Then you live with the choice

10. The Four Villains of Decision Making 1. Narrow Framing makes you miss options 2. Confirmation Bias leads you to gather self-serving information 3. Short-term Emotions will often tempt you to make the wrong one 4. You are often overconfident about how the future will unfold

11. Decisive What’s in our spotlight = the most accessible information + our interpretation of that information . But that will rarely be all that we need to make a good decision.

12. Decisive 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 always remember to shift the light.

13. Decisive Researchers have found “process matters” more than analysis – by a factor of six Superb analysis is useless unless the decision process gives it a fair hearing It is not the WHAT – It is the HOW

14. Decisive Our decision track record is not great – trusting our gut or conducting rigorous analysis won’t fix it. The pros and cons process won’t correct these problems -- But the WRAP process will!!! A better decision process substantially improves the results of the decision.

15. Decisive The WRAP Process To make better choices, we must avoid the most common decision-making biases. Being aware of these biases isn’t sufficient to avoid them, but a process can help. The WRAP Process can help us make better, bolder decisions.

16. WRAP Widen Your Options Reality-Test Your Assumptions Attain Distance Before Deciding Prepare to be Wrong

17. Widen Your Option Avoid Narrow Framing Often our options are far more plentiful We need to uncover new options What if our current options disappeared?

18. Widen Your Option Multitracking Consider options simultaneously Beware of “sham” options Push for “this and that” rather than “this or that”

19. Widen Your Options Find someone who has solved the problem Try Laddering: Local, Regional and Distant When you feel stuck-Look Inside/Look Outside

20. Reality-Test Your Assumptions Consider the Opposite Spark constructive disagreement Confirmation Bias-self-serving information Ask Disconfirming Questions Force yourself-takes discipline Test a deliberate mistake

21. Reality-Test Your Assumptions Zoom Out, Zoom In Inside view-our evaluation of the situation Outside view-how things generally unfold Outside view-usually more accurate Helps you to gather the best information

22. Reality-Test Your Assumptions OOCH Running small experiments—rather than jumping in Common hiring error– interview—predicting success Why predict when we can know?

23. Attain Distance Before Deciding Overcome Short-term Emotion Emotions tempt us to make decisions that are bad long-term Attain Distance Look from an observer’s view What would I tell my best friend to do in this situation?

24. Attain Distance Before Deciding Honor Your Core Priorities Agonizing decisions are often a sign of conflict with your core Identify core to resolve present and future dilemmas Go on offense against lesser priorities

25. Prepare To Be Wrong Bookend the Future Consider a range of outcomes Prepare for the unforeseen— “safety factor” Anticipate problems Prepare for adversity and success

26. Prepare To Be Wrong Set a Tripwire We can go on autopilot—leaving past decisions unquestioned Can snap us awake and make us realize we have choices Consider deadlines and partitions

27. How to Escape From Bad Decisions It is remarkably difficult to cut our losses and walk away. The consequences of escalation can be disastrous!! To understand: Sunk costs ego threat

28. Trusting the Process How can you ensure a decision seems fair? WRAP – contributes to that sense of fairness It allows people to understand how the decision is made and gives them comfort that decisions will be made in a consistent manner.

29. Trusting the Process The goal is to inspire you to use a better process for making decisions. The process need not take a long time to be effective. What a process provides is confidence. It will not make it easy or always make it turn out right but it will empower you to make bolder results.

30. Next Steps http://heathbrothers.com Resources: Overview-one page Decisive Workbook 12 Decision Situations Decisive Podcasts Decisive Book Club Guide

31. Decisive Our decisions will never be perfect, but they can be better, bolder and wiser. The right process can steer us towards the right choice. And the right choice, at the right moment, can make all the difference.