Quotes from Chip Heath

One Small Step Can Change Your Life, by Robert Maurer [Individual and organizational change]. If you liked the chapter on shrinking the change, this is your book. Maurer shows how small steps can lead to great change.

Pain now for a payoff later.

Divorce Busting, by Michele Weiner-Davis [Relationships]. Anyone in a relationship can benefit from this book by a practitioner of solutions-focused therapy.

it can be the honesty and trustworthiness of our sources, not their status, that allows them to act as authorities. Sometimes

Influencer, by Kerry Patterson

the Aha! experience is much more satisfying when it is preceded by the Huh? experience.

Jonathan Haidt. See Haidt (2006), The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom, New

The simple act of committing to an answer makes the students more engaged and more curious about the outcome.

Prioritization rescues people from the quicksand of decision angst, and that's why finding the core is so valuable.

The most important lesson to learn about devil's advocacy isn't the need for a formal contrarian position; it's the need to interpret criticism as a noble function.

Not every meeting needs to be a "defining moment." But once every 5 to 10 meetings, find a way to break the script.

Compromise is like the old joke, "A camel is a horse made by a committee.

He'd just finished one drink when an attractive woman approached and asked if she could buy him another. He was surprised but flattered. Sure, he said. The woman walked to the bar and brought back two more drinks—one for her and one for him. He thanked her and took a sip. And that was the last thing he remembered.

97.5% of the world's water is salinated. Of the 2.5% that's fresh, over 99% is trapped in glaciers and snowfields. In total, only .025% of the water on the globe is actually drinkable by humans and animals.

he has announced an even tougher commitment device: Now he'll take four months of vacation per year. This would appear to commit him to becoming French.

When your finance professor starts using the word "dude," you must eliminate the word from your vocabulary.

Imagine a gallon jug filled with water with three ice cubes next to it. All of the water in the jug is salt water. The ice cubes are the only fresh water, and humans can only drink the drops that are melting off of each.

THE DOWNSIDE OF PROVOKING disagreement is that it can curdle into bitter politics.

Our Rider has a problem focus when he needs a solution focus. If you are a manager, ask yourself: "What is the ratio of the time I spend solving problems to the time I spend scaling successes?

You need to create the expectation of failure—not the failure of the mission itself, but failure en route. This

Loewenstein argues that gaps cause pain.

The ambiguity in the goal is allowing rationalization to creep in.

To make better decisions, use the WRAP process: Widen Your Options. Reality-Test Your Assumptions. Attain Distance Before Deciding. Prepare to Be Wrong.

That's why the initial slowness of bargaining may be offset by a critical advantage: It speeds up implementation. The superintendent can make a lightning-fast decision if she makes it autocratically, but if her administrators and teachers hate it, then adoption will come to a standstill.