It’s something we all strive to do – make better choices.

So much of the work we do at Decker focuses on helping others make better choices. We help people be more influential when they communicate their ideas. And an important part of being more influential comes from understanding how decisions are made.

When I learned that our partners from Decker Made to Stick Messaging, Chip Heath and Dan Heath (the bestselling authors of Made to Stick and Switch), decided to co-author a book about decision-making, my curiosity was piqued.

Many of us – myself included – have relied on the tried and true model of “The Pro/Con List” when making a big decision. The roots of this method can be traced all the way back to Benjamin Franklin. The Heath brothers challenge the idea that the best decision comes from this process of weighing the pros and the cons.

Instead, they present an alternative, more omniscient process for making decisions. Their process helps us overcome our own narrow frame, emotions and self-serving objectives. It also helps us prepare to live with these decisions by examining the best and worst case scenarios.

Their new book Decisive outlines this decision-making process in a straight-forward, four-step process using the acronym WRAP:

          Widen your options

          Reality-test your assumptions

          Attain distance before deciding

          Prepare to be wrong

Look out, list-makers, this process is a game changer.

We all make important decisions. Hiring, purchasing, partnering, firing, even jury duty – all of these choices stand to improve using this new, yet simple, framework.

The WRAP process removes our blinders and our biases.

Decisive (released this week) is poised to become the next business bestseller  – and it’s no wonder why.