Install gates against avoidable errors

You cannot eliminate uncertainty. You can stop making the same class of preventable mistake because emotion skipped a known question.

Match process to reversibility

Two-way door: reversible, bounded decision. Set a short deadline, choose an owner, act with incomplete information, and review.

One-way or costly door: permanent equity, debt guarantee, acquisition, major hire, regulated launch, exclusive contract, sensitive-data architecture, or public allegation. Slow down enough to perform independent review, downside modelling, and documentation. Overthinking occurs when a reversible decision consumes one-way-door analysis. Recklessness occurs when a one-way door receives two-way-door speed.

The seven-line decision memo

1. Decision and deadline. 2. Objective and governing principle. 3. Facts, assumptions, and unknowns.

4. Options—including doing nothing. 5. Expected upside, downside, and second-order effects. 6. Recommendation, owner, and safeguards. 7. Review trigger and date.

Store the memo before the result is known. This prevents hindsight from rewriting why you decided.

Use a pre-mortem

Assume it is one year later and the decision failed badly. Ask each relevant person independently to list reasons. Common categories:

• • customer demand was mistaken;
• • sale or adoption took longer;
• • key assumptions depended on one person or vendor;
• • cash timing broke the plan;
• • incentives produced hidden behaviour;
• • technical, security, legal, or operational complexity was ignored;
• • the team lacked capability or attention;
• • success itself overloaded the system.

Then add controls only for material, plausible risks. A pre-mortem should sharpen action, not create paralysis.

Seek disconfirmation

Assign someone to argue the strongest case against the preferred option. Ask what evidence would change the decision. Reward the discovery of a fatal flaw before commitment. Do not confuse loyalty with agreement.

Decision deadlines

• • reversible and low downside: hours or days;
• • moderate cost with known controls: days to a few weeks;
• • irreversible or existential: enough time for evidence and independent review, with a stated decision date so diligence does not become avoidance.

· GE ch. 34; LG pp. 62–80, 95–104; ASC pp. 50–56. Mechanisms paraphrased; judgment and examples are labelled.