Quotes from Chip Heath

In the service business, a good surprise is one that delights employees as well as customers.

In Bangladesh, millions survive on pennies a day. With little access to banks, they're forced to pay outrageous interest rates (100% a year or more) whenever they need to access money.

companies often emphasize features when they should be emphasizing benefits.

North Carolina State Hospital Association, said: "An awful lot of people for a long time have had their heads in the sand on this issue, and it's time to do the right thing. It's as simple as that.

The U.S. national debt is $27 trillion.

To diagnose whether your colleagues have created real or sham options, poll them for their preferences. If there's disagreement, that's a great sign that you have real options. An easy consensus may be a red flag.

The Combat Maneuver Training Center, the unit in charge of military simulations, recommends that officers arrive at the Commander's Intent by asking themselves two questions: If we do nothing else during tomorrow's mission, we must _________________. The single, most important thing that we must do tomorrow is ________________.

The U.S. national debt is $27 trillion—$82,000 per citizen.

Widen Your Options. Reality-Test Your Assumptions. Attain Distance Before Deciding. Prepare to Be Wrong.

When the Rider analyzes a problem, he seeks a solution that befits the scale of it. If the Rider spots a hole, he wants to fill it, and if he's got a round hole with a 24-inch diameter, he's gonna go looking for a 24-inch peg. But that mental model is wrong.

people don't buy quarter-inch drill bits. They buy quarter-inch holes so they can hang their children's pictures.

Any successful change requires a translation of ambiguous goals into concrete behaviors. In short, to make a switch, you need to script the critical moves.

At work and in life, we often pretend that we want truth when we're really seeking reassurance: "Do these jeans make me look fat?" "What did you think of my poem?" These questions do not crave honest answers.

people will persevere only if they perceive falling down as learning rather than as failing.

Exception Question: "When was the last time you saw a little bit of the miracle, even just for a short time?

Our median customer is 32 years old, married, with kids; and 93% of our customers work a full-time job. Our typical customer has 1.7 children (with 1.3 under the age of five). Her top 3 reasons for buying our product are 1) convenience, 2) familiar flavor, and 3) "not as bad" nutritionally as many of our competitors.

In times of change, we need to remind ourselves and others, again and again, of certain basic truths: Our brains and our abilities are like muscles. They can be strengthened with practice.

It's an ingenious tactic. What the therapist is trying to demonstrate, in a subtle way, is that the client is capable of solving her own problem.

The massive scale of Walmart—its $444 billion revenue in 2012 amounts to $64 for every person on earth—inspires a complicated mixture of emotions: awe, fear, admiration, and loathing.

One rule of thumb is to keep searching for options until you fall in love at least twice. If you've only identified one good candidate for a job, for instance, you'll have the strong urge to talk yourself into hiring her, which is a recipe for the confirmation bias. You'll start to make excuses for the flaws you see: She asked us not to call her old boss for a reference, but that's probably okay, because the boss sounded like a real jerk …

time periods, and outcome variables Ã¢â'¬Â¦ it is impossible to find any domain in which humans clearly outperformed crude extrapolation algorithms.

The linkages between emotion and behavior can be more subtle, though. For instance, a secondary effect of being angry, which was recently discovered by researchers, is that we become more certain of our judgments. When we're angry, we know we're right, as anyone who has been in a relationship can attest.

When was the last time you saw a little bit of the miracle, even just for a short time?

Which of these animals is more likely to kill you? A SHARK                                    A DEER           ANSWER: The deer is more likely to kill you. In fact, it's 300 times more likely to kill you (via a collision with your car).