Teaching decision making: a free session plan for managers, MBA and executive classes

Pre-work (optional, 10 minutes)

The Decision Sprint toolkit

The claim the whole session rests on: a slow decision usually costs more than a wrong one. You can fix a wrong call next month. A slow call drains momentum, wears down confidence and teaches the team that nothing moves until the leader stops hesitating. Leaders tend to stall for four honest reasons: an open question can never be proved wrong, a decision creates friction with someone, the search for the ideal answer feels safer than a decent answer carried out well, and gathering more input feels like progress. The toolkit gives you one way to sort decisions, one five minute method to make them, one way to announce them, two tools for bigger strategic calls, and a way to size the bet before you commit.

One-way and two-way doors

A one-way door is hard or impossible to walk back through: a senior hire, a new business model, closing a product line. Those deserve data, input and a night's sleep, with a cap measured in days, not months. A two-way door can be reversed: a pricing experiment, a new channel, a different tool, a reshuffled team. Settle those in a single five minute sprint and keep your energy for the one-way doors. The usual mistake is handling a two-way door as if it were a one-way door. Three checks: could you undo it within a quarter, could you pilot it on a small slice first, and would another month of waiting actually change what you know?

The five minute Decision Sprint

Five prompts, one per minute, with a timer the whole room can see. When it rings, the decision is made. Minute 1: name the choice. Write it as option A or option B, not as a theme. "Our hiring" is a theme. "Do we run the Q3 campaign with a contractor or with our own team?" is a choice. Minute 2: can it be undone? If yes, decent information and a lean toward action is enough. If no, use the minute to name the one fact you still need, not to push the date. Minute 3: which facts would change my answer? Five at most, from cost, time, risk, upside and the team's capacity. Anything missing gets an owner and an end of day deadline. Minute 4: what does your instinct say? Treat it as experience reaching a conclusion before you can explain it. A muddled instinct is information too: something is missing, or the options are so close that either will do. Minute 5: the decision, and the date you announce it. Write it as a decision. "We are leaning toward the contractor" does not count. Most calls need enough confidence to act and full commitment afterwards, not near certainty followed by a half hearted rollout.

Decide alone or get input

Decide alone when you hold far more of the context than anyone else, when speed matters more than agreement, when the call is easy to reverse, or when asking around would cost more than it returns. Ask for input when others know things you do not, when the result depends on their buy-in, when the call changes their work, or when you need thinking you cannot do yourself. Input is not a vote: you collect views, weigh them, and then the call is yours. Tell people which of the two it is before you ask them anything.

The four part announcement

1. The call, in one sentence. 2. The reasoning, in two or three sentences. 3. Next steps, each with an owner and a date. 4. Where questions and concerns go. Then stop talking: no long backstory, no inviting people to reopen it, and no apology for having decided.

The Options Generator

Before a strategic call, get at least four options on the table, not just the one you already favour. The expected route. Its reverse. A blend of the two. And an outsider's move: what would someone running a business in an unrelated sector try here? The outsider option rarely wins. Its job is to make the expected route compete against three real alternatives rather than a weak one set up to lose.

The Quarterly Kill List

Once a quarter, rank and stop at least five things, looking in four places. Products or services that trail the rest on margin, customer satisfaction or fit with the strategy. Projects that have stalled for a quarter, have no clear owner, or that nobody can explain in a sentence. Meetings and processes that have stopped producing decisions, or that could be a written update. Partnerships where the value only flows one way. Stopped means stopped, not parked. One question decides each line: if this were not already running, would you launch it now? If not, stop it.

Size the bet, then check it with 10-10-10

Before a one-way door, decide the size of the bet up front: how much money, how many weeks and how much of your credibility you will put behind it, and the date you will review it. Then commit fully until that date instead of reopening it every week. In Andreas's words, it will work until you decide it doesn't. For calls with a personal or emotional pull, add Suzy Welch's 10-10-10: imagine yourself ten minutes after deciding, then ten months, then ten years, give each a score from 1 to 10, and read the direction. Scores that climb mean short term discomfort worth getting through. Scores that drop mean something that feels good now and costs later. Steady scores mean the choice fits what you value. Its job is to stop the mood of the moment from deciding for you.

One-way and two-way doors (Type 1 and Type 2 decisions) come from Jeff Bezos's Amazon shareholder letters. The 10-10-10 test is Suzy Welch's. The Decision Sprint, the decide alone or get input rule, the four part announcement, the Options Generator, the Quarterly Kill List and sizing the bet are Andreas Pettersson's.

Session plans

Pick the length that fits your slot. Every version uses the same test, framework and worksheet.

The free test participants take

Participants take the free decision making test on their own phone or laptop. It takes a few minutes. It asks for a name and email to send the full result, so tell participants that in advance. Results go only to the person who took it, so nobody has to share a score unless they choose to.

The case: the head of product with eleven open decisions

Discussion questions

1. Sort Tomas's six decisions into one-way and two-way doors. Which one did your group disagree on, and what would settle it?
2. Which of the four honest reasons for dragging decisions out (fear of being wrong, avoiding conflict, looking for the perfect answer, confusing process with progress) best explains the seven week tool switch? How would you know?
3. The pricing test: should Tomas have decided alone or got input? What did the corridor reversal teach his team about how to get a decision changed?
4. Use the Options Generator on decision (f). What is the outsider's move, and would you choose it?
5. What belongs on Fennick Labs' first Quarterly Kill List, and which kill would be hardest for Tomas to say out loud? For decision (f), what size of bet would you set, and when would you review it?
6. In your own sprint, what did minute 3 remove from the list of facts you thought you needed? What was that extra information-gathering really protecting you from?
7. What decision will you announce, to whom, and on what date? What will you do if someone pushes to reopen it?

Facilitator notes

• The timer is the method. Project a countdown with an audible alarm, call each minute aloud, and do not give extra time. The discomfort at the alarm is the lesson: most participants discover they already knew the answer.
• Some people pick a decision that is not theirs to make and find out in minute 1. Do not rescue them. Reframe on the spot: their decision becomes "do I recommend X to the person who owns it, and by when".
• Expect the objection that this is reckless. Answer with the doors: the sprint is for two-way doors, and one-way doors still get up to two weeks of proper work and a sized bet with a review date. What the session removes is the two months of drift.
• Participants never have to say what their decision is about. In the debrief ask only whether they reached a decision, what minute they got stuck on, and the announcement date.
• Students without a job can use a group project, course choice, internship or living decision. Give them two minutes before the sprint to pick one that is genuinely open.
• Put the credits on your slide: two-way doors to Jeff Bezos, 10-10-10 to Suzy Welch. It models the habit you are teaching in any session on judgment: say where an idea comes from.