TRANSFORMATIVE DECISIONS
2 IDEAS FROM ME
Organize your journey with transformative flywheels, habits, and decisions to manifest your highest values, vision, and goals. Flywheels and habits convert short-term states into long-term traits and provide a compass for making transformative decisions.
Transformative decisions come in three flavors: Coffee, Career, and Cancer. Deciding what type of daily coffee experience you want is a two-way-door decision that can be quickly made and easily changed. Career decisions take more time to make and include both two-way-door decisions that can be easily changed and one-way-door decisions which are much more difficult to change. Cancer type decisions are typically most difficult to change. For example, deciding to have a bilateral mastectomy for breast cancer is irreversible once made. Getting a cancer treatment decision wrong could mean the difference between life and death.
2 QUOTES FROM SAGES
Chip and Dan Heath provide a simple and powerful tool to make good transformative decisions in their book, Decisive: How to Make Better Choices in Life and Work. This WRAP mnemonic tool is summarized below.
WRAP
W = Widen Your Options. Overcome our narrow-framing bias by exploring additional alternatives. Use “AND” not “OR” thinking to explore ways of realizing the benefits of both options instead of just one. Use “Bright Spots” to identify people who have solved the problem and investigate. Bright Spots are outlier examples where the problem has been solved.
R = Reality-test Your Assumptions. Consider the opposite possibility of assumptions and overcome the confirmation bias by collecting real data through small experiments to verify assumptions. Use external reviews and experts when possible.
A = Attain Distance Before Deciding. Overcome short-term emotions by using the 10/10/10 strategy to get some perspective. 10/10/10 was developed by Suzy Welch and detailed in her book of the same name. It attains the distance of time by considering how you would feel 10 minutes, 10 months, and 10 years after deciding on each choice. Distance can also be reached by considering your advice to a close friend or observer faced with similar choices. Use the ideal-state core priorities of your life-calling and vision to make the final call on where you spend your time and energy.
P = Prepare to Be Wrong. Overcome overconfidence bias by bookending the future with realistic worst-case and best-case scenarios. Use “premortem” and FMEA (Failure Modes and Effects Analysis) processes to understand the full spectrum of most likely failures, causes, impacts, and remedies. Use the “preparade” process to identify the most likely conditions required for best-case scenarios. Set trip wires (setpoints) that require decisions to consider other alternatives when plans fail or exceed expectations. Some tripwires can be intuitive and do not require quantitative measures to trigger action. An example of this type of tripwire is a pediatric nurse sensing a child is in trouble but can’t explain exactly why with metrics. The nurse can trigger an emergency response team without having to exactly explain why. This can often result in saving a child’s life. You can speed up the decision-making process by examining the bookends. If the bookend occurs, is the impact recoverable? If not, it’s a “one-way-door” decision that requires other critical stakeholders to be involved in the decision and will take longer. If the bookend is easily recoverable and does not impact others negatively, then it’s a “two-way-door” decision that you can make on your own. Any impacts on other people need to be negotiated as part of the decision process.
“Whenever you’re making an important decision, first ask if it gets you closer to your goals or farther away. If the answer is closer, pull the trigger. If it’s farther away, make a different choice. Conscious choice making is a critical step in making your dreams a reality.”—Jillian Michaels
1 QUESTION FOR YOU TO EXPLORE
What one-way-door decisions are you facing that WRAP could help resolve?
Namaste,
Duane Nelson
