Featured Books: How to Decide
Heath, Chip. Decisive : how to make better choices in life and work. Crown Business, 2013.
Chip and Dan Heath, authors of the new book, Decisive, have long been associated with Fuqua. Dan lives in Raleigh and is currently a fellow at CASE, the Center for the Advancement of Social Entrepreneurship. Chip was once a faculty member at Fuqua, in the management area, before he defected in 2000 to become a professor of organizational behavior at Stanford.
Chip and Dan are also the authors of two best selling books, Made to Stick (2007) – a guide to creating ideas that thrive — and Switch (2010) – a guide to implementing transformative change. These thought-provoking books present academic research illustrated with anecdotes from corporate and everyday life. The authors break down complicated ideas into simple parts and show how to apply them to real world situations, both at work and at home. Sprinkled with humor throughout, these books present strategies and practical tools. Their new book, Decisive, follows the same formula and is already on its way to becoming their third best seller.
At Fuqua, Decisive won the vote among Fuqua staff as the featured text for the Ford Library discussion group, which gathered last week to share ideas about the book. Participants considered the decisions that they were making in real time and how they were applying the principles that they learned in Decisive, including widening their options and testing their assumptions. Concepts considered especially valuable were “opportunity cost” and the 10/10/10 principle developed by business journalist Suzy Welch – what impact will a particular decision have 10 minutes from now, 10 months from now and 10 years from now.
Fuqua staff members who would like to be included in future emailings for the next book discussion should contact me at mtrauner@duke.edu
© Meg Trauner & Ford Library – Fuqua School of Business.
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