#428 – August 3, 2026

Decisions Are Judged Twice

 

Hello, fellow strategists!

We tend to judge our decisions by their reasoning. Everyone else judges them by how they were handled. This edition looks at the difference: at ordinary, well-intentioned habits that drain trust; why a chart naming a decision-maker often misses who actually decides; and ten rules to help you pause and think before an important call. Along the way we note where capacity beneath a change starts to run out, and a negotiator’s method for lowering the temperature. Enjoy!  

 

Quick Takes

Trust Doesn’t Break Where You Think

Most of the leaders we work with already know trust is central — to team morale, partnerships, negotiations, and how quickly anything gets decided. The harder question is what to do when it’s low.

Before repairing a lack of trust, it’s worth looking at where the leaks are. Trust seldom drains through a single dramatic breach. It goes out through ordinary habits, most of them well-intentioned:

• Reassurances you can’t guarantee. “No one will lose their job.” “Nothing will change for our clients.” One reassurance later shown to be false will contaminate every later statement, including the true ones. An unkeepable promise costs more than no promise.
• Surprises. A board member reads it in the paper; staff learn of a restructuring from a job posting. The communications gap is often more damaging than the decision, because it implies someone couldn’t be entrusted with the information.
• Silence while things are uncertain. Waiting for a complete answer feels responsible. But the vacuum fills with the worst available explanation, and an accurate account then has to displace an entrenched rumour.
• Consultation that goes nowhere. Asking for input and never reporting back is worse than not asking. It teaches people that participation is theatre — and poisons the next legitimate conversation.
• Rules bent inconsistently. The same policy waived for one person and enforced on another. This is corrosive out of proportion to the stakes, because people can’t trust the rules. Or they generalize from the one instance they can see to everything they can’t.
• A rationale that changes after the fact. People generally forgive a decision made for good reasons. They don’t forgive discovering the reasons stated weren’t the real ones — and then they re-examine every earlier explanation.

What connects this list is worth considering: damage to trust comes from more than a decision itself. It comes from what was promised, how people found out, what they were consulted on beforehand, and whether the explanation held up later.  Many of those trust-breakers remain in your hands, even when the decision may not. 

 

Points to Ponder:  Waves, Focus, Tension

• Where the wave slows first. A wave nearing the shore doesn’t break simply because it has grown too high. As it enters shallow water, the seabed slows the lower part of the wave while the crest continues forward, making the wave increasingly steep until it topples. The same process helps explain why a change that feels right-sized at the leadership table can loom much larger for the people expected to implement it. The initiative didn’t become more ambitious. The water became shallower. It’s worth asking early:  where does the depth of capacity beneath a wave of change cause it to break?
• When to focus on process instead of goals.  In his July newsletter on work and life habits, author Ryan Holiday declared: “I don’t have goals. When I write, I don’t focus on finishing books—that would be overwhelming. Instead, I focus on my notecard system and writing for a couple hours every day. The books emerge from that process naturally, over time.”
• Name the emotion to ease tension. Chris Voss, a former FBI high-stakes negotiator, says negotiation is less about compromise than emotional intelligence and problem-solving. In Never Split the Difference, he advises that rather than sympathizing with someone —agreeing with their emotions— you should identify and articulate them. Instead of sympathetically saying “I understand,” try: “It sounds like you are concerned about the timeline,” or “It seems you’re finding this really frustrating.” Labelling the emotion validates the other person’s perspective without agreeing with their demands, helping to de-escalate tension and build trust.

 

Who Actually Makes the Decision?

Most teams have a chart somewhere naming who is responsible, accountable, consulted and informed — the familiar RACI grid. Few teams behave as though it exists.

Writing in the July–August Harvard Business Review, Lindy Greer and Maxim Sytch (Michigan Ross) and Jennifer Jordan (IMD) draw on their research and work with more than 100 companies to explain why these tools so often disappoint: the trouble is rarely the framework itself, and usually how it was built.

They identify four common mistakes — each pointing to a practice worth adopting.

• Define the decisions before assigning roles. Broad goals invite ownership disputes, because several people can each believe they own the outcome. Break the main objective into specific decisions and subgoals; the roles then become much easier to assign.
• Build the roles together. People rarely honour responsibilities they had no hand in shaping. Involving those affected uncovers disagreement early — and creates the buy-in that makes assignments hold up later.
• Clarify the behaviours expected in specific roles. A label isn’t an instruction. Spell out who supplies input, who joins the debate, who makes the final call, and how the decision gets communicated.
• Match roles to the initiative, not the hierarchy. The most senior person isn’t automatically the right owner. Give ownership to whoever holds the most relevant expertise and vantage point. When leaders step back from calls that others are better placed to make, teams move faster.

The authors also advise revisiting assignments as circumstances change.

What makes the difference isn’t the chart on the wall but the conversation that produced it — when a team says out loud whose judgment it trusts, and on what. Clarity of that kind tends to survive a change in conditions. A list handed down from above rarely does.

 

8020Info Drill-Down:

10 Rules for Better Decision-Making

When you have an important decision to make, pause first and consider these 10 rules. They won’t tell you what decision to make, but they can help you make a better one.

• Strategy is about choices.  Good strategy requires deciding what you will do — and, just as importantly, what you won’t do. Don’t avoid a difficult choice by trying to accommodate everything.
• Focus on what matters most.  Not every consideration deserves equal weight. Identify the factor that matters most and give it the weight it deserves.
• Get your priorities straight.  When priorities conflict, something has to give. Never allow a lower priority to outweigh a higher one.
• Don’t confuse “not yet” with “never”.  Don’t decide before you’re ready or the timing is right. But don’t use the need for more information as an excuse for endless delay. Know the difference between avoidance and strategic patience.
• Look for the opportunity, not just the risk.  We naturally look for what could go wrong. Good decision-makers also ask: What could go right — and what opportunity might we miss if we focus only on avoiding failure?
• Create better options. The choice in front of you is rarely the only choice available. Before choosing between A and B, ask: Is there a C?
• Turn big decisions into small steps. You don’t always have to make the whole decision at once. Take a step that generates information, tests an assumption or reduces uncertainty. Let smaller decisions teach you what the larger decision should be.
• Look beyond today. A decision that looks attractive now may look very different later. Consider how today’s choice will play out over time — including consequences that aren’t immediately visible.
• Keep it simple enough to work.  If a decision requires heroic effort, endless coordination or a complicated implementation plan, something may be wrong. The best solution is often the one people can actually execute.
• Support the decision. A good decision can fail if the conditions for success aren’t there. Ask not only “Is this the right decision?” but also “What do we need to make it work?”

Find more tips for reflection in What Do I Do Now? Dr. Foster’s 30 Laws of Great Decision Making, Charles Foster (Simon & Schuster, 2001). 

 

For Your Reading List:  Intelligence at Work

In contrast to all the corporate hype in the tech sector, you might want to look at AI for Good: How Real People Are Using Artificial Intelligence to Fix Things That Matter by Josh Tyrangiel, a writer with The Atlantic. He reports from the Cleveland Clinic, the IRS, an Indiana school district and the Pentagon, following doctors, teachers and civil servants putting AI to work.

Success, he finds, depends on three things: AI that augments rather than replaces judgment, humans able to check the output, and front-line staff (not technologists) deciding what needs fixing. Some reviewers have singled out his example of an MIT scientist who decodes the vocalizations of nonspeaking autistic children, including her son’s — suggesting the book is strongest where it’s most personal.

 

Closing Thought:  Resizing the Mind

“A mind once stretched by a new idea never regains its original dimension.“
—  (a slight paraphrase of the original quote) Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.

 

AI Disclosure: This newsletter was hand-crafted and personally curated. In addition to using Gemini Pro and other online tools for research and fact-checking, the author made some use of Claude and ChatGPT for polishing the prose and headings.