The Handbook Co.
A decision-making publisherThe Current Issue · MMXXVI
A decision-making publisher

Every working life turns on a handful of hard decisions.

We publish for those moments — one book at a time, researched, audited, and written to be kept.

Enter the issue
From the publisher

The books are the surface. Underneath, a decision-making company.

A handbook is a small object. It is meant to be held, used, returned to — left open on a desk, not admired on a shelf. That is the modest thing these books are, and it is the whole of what we are trying to make: writing that works at the moment a person actually needs it.

Underneath the books is a less modest endeavour. The Handbook Co. is a decision-making company. The books are the surface; beneath them we are building, slowly and in the open, an honest answer to a single question — what is actually true about how good decisions get made, at the moments in a working life that turn on one. A career change. A layoff. A return after years away. A move inside the company you already work for.

There is no shortage of words for those moments. There is a shortage of words that work.

IThe Library

One method, many lives.

We publish in series — one for each kind of life a decision belongs to. The first is for the job seeker. Others will follow, each chosen for one reason: it is a decision that turns a working life, and is badly served by what already exists.

Enter the Library →

IIOn method

The models beneath the books.

We do not invent our frameworks. We read the primary decision-science literature, grade it, and borrow what holds — then put it to work inside a specific book. A few of the models beneath the series, and where each does its work:

Endings, Neutral Zone, New Beginnings
William Bridges
Every transition opens with an ending and passes through a formless middle before anything new begins.
Applied in The Rebound Handbook
The non-event
Nancy Schlossberg
The transitions that hurt most are often the ones that never happen — the promotion counted on, and not given.
Applied in The Internal Move Handbook
Recognition-primed decision
Gary Klein
Expertise is pattern recognition; the novice flails where the expert recognises. So we lend a borrowed pattern library.
Applied in every Handbook
The outside view
Kahneman & Tversky
Judge your case against the base rate, not your private sense of it. The distribution is kinder than the feeling.
Applied in The First-Role Handbook
Working identity
Herminia Ibarra
Identity in a change of work is reworked through action and retelling — not discovered in advance of it.
Applied in The Career Pivot Handbook
Structured judgement
Schmidt, Hunter & Sackett
Structured methods out-predict the gut — in hiring, and in deciding. Structure is the edge.
Applied in The Interview Handbook
IIIField Notes

The reading that feeds the deciding.

Short essays we publish between editions — free to read, here on our own pages. Not sales pieces; a way to watch the publisher think before you buy a word.