Here is Rob’s next chapter!

Nick has been wrestling with a big decision for nearly six weeks, and he still hasn’t pulled the trigger.

His division president has made it clear: leverage artificial intelligence to reduce head count and overall operating costs by 50% within the next 12 months. He is adamant. The board has seen what competitors are doing, and the window is closing.

Nick has a great team around him — about 60 people. They get the job done and are loyal to Nick. Transitioning more of the work load to AI and reducing costs will mean elimination of positions. The question is how — and how fast.

A gradual approach will protect his people and buy time to separate AI promise from AI hype. But if competitors move faster and slash their pricing, Nick’s clients might follow the money before his transformation is complete. A radical approach will meet the timeline — but it risks gutting the team before he knows whether AI can carry the load. If it can’t, the damage will be hard to undo.

Nick isn’t reckless. And he isn’t indecisive. But at some point, thoughtful preparation begins to look like procrastination. He needs help making a big decision.

The Leadership Challenge

Decision-making is part of your job description as a leader — perhaps the most important part. Managers act on decisions that have already been made. But leaders make decisions. The further up you rise as a leader, the more consequential your decisions become; and the less obvious the right answer.

And the pace is accelerating. Technology, AI in particular, is compressing timelines, multiplying options, and raising the stakes. You are likely making more decisions, faster, with less certainty, than at any other time in your career.

Research confirms what you may already feel. In 2023, Oracle and data scientist Seth Stephens-Davidowitz surveyed over 14,000 business leaders across 17 countries. Eighty-five percent of those leaders reported “decision distress” — regretting, feeling guilty about, or questioning a significant decision they had made in the past year.1 Surprisingly, the problem wasn’t too little information. It was too much. Seventy-two percent said the sheer volume of data had stopped them from making any decision at all. More information doesn’t always produce more confidence. Sometimes it results in more paralysis.

The Leadership Opportunity

You can bring a disciplined approach to your big decisions. Here are four steps you can follow to make better, more timely decisions, with increasing wisdom:

Step One: Determine Slow . . . or Fast

Before anything else, ask: Is this decision a one-way door or a two-way door?

Jeff Bezos introduced this framework in his 2015 letter to Amazon shareholders.2 Some decisions are nearly irreversible — one-way doors — and demand methodical, unhurried thinking. Others are two-way doors — reversible, correctable, lower-cost to undo — and can be made quickly. The trap most leaders fall into: applying one-way door rigor to two-way door decisions. Bezos called the result “slowness, unthoughtful risk aversion, failure to experiment sufficiently, and consequently diminished invention.”

So, ask. What would it cost — in time, money, relationships, or reputation — to reverse this decision? If the cost is low, move faster. If the cost is high, slow down.

Step Two: Gather Input

Former four-star General and Secretary of State Colin Powell developed a simple rule for making tough calls under pressure: the 40-70 rule. You need between 40 and 70 percent of the available information to make a good decision.3

Below 40 percent, you’re shooting from the hip. Above 70 percent, the opportunity has usually passed or the decision has been made for you by events. Powell’s point was this: when you have roughly 70 percent of what you need, decide — because you may lose an opportunity.

Gather actively — seek perspectives that challenge your assumptions, not just confirm them. Intellectual humility is a strength, but endless analysis is not. The goal is good judgment under uncertainty, not the elimination of uncertainty itself.

Step Three: Decide Using All Four Dimensions

Big decisions are not purely intellectual events. If you are making the decision on autopilot, you risk relying on logic alone — only one of your four dimensions. With intentionality, you bring all of yourself — all four dimensions — to bear.

Physically: The state of your body affects the quality of your decisions more than most leaders acknowledge. Sleep deprivation shifts the brain toward risk-seeking and dulls your ability to weigh potential losses. Chronic stress narrows thinking. Ignatius of Loyola called it consolation versus desolation — decide, when you can, from a place of groundedness and calm, not exhaustion or pressure. How does the decision feel in your body?

Intellectually: Use the frameworks. Gather data. Think through second-order consequences. Ask what you could be wrong about or where you might have a blind spot.

Emotionally: Pay attention to what emotion you’re feeling with the decision. Remember that your emotions always point towards “what I really want.” Anger often signals a barrier between you and what you want. Fear signals that what you want is at risk. Your emotions are data — not noise to suppress, but signals to respect.

Spiritually: Ask whether this decision is consistent with who you are — your beliefs, your values, your identity and purpose as a leader. When a decision aligns with your spiritual core, you can commit to it and defend it even when if things get difficult.

Step Four: Learn from an After-Action Review

Treat a significant decision as a learning event, not just a challenge to get past. Once the dust settles, go back and review. Ask three questions: How did I decide? What did I decide? What was the outcome?

A bad outcome doesn’t always mean a bad decision. Sometimes good processes produce bad results because of factors outside your control. What matters most is the quality and speed of your decision-making process, because that’s where you can improve. Reflection will help you gain wisdom for future decisions.

Notes

1. Oracle and Seth Stephens-Davidowitz, “The Decision Dilemma,” global study of 14,250 employees and business leaders across 17 countries, April 2023. Available at oracle.com/decision-dilemma.

2. Jeff Bezos, 2015 Letter to Shareholders, Amazon Annual Report, 2016. Bezos elaborated on the framework in a 2023 interview with Lex Fridman.

3. Colin Powell with Tony Koltz, It Worked for Me: In Life and Leadership (HarperCollins, 2012). The 40-70 rule is also discussed in Oren Harari, “Quotations from Chairman Powell: A Leadership Primer,” Management Review, December 1996.