Capability 10 · Lead Myself
Make the Right Calls
A high-profile advisory group approached a scaling founder with a compelling pitch — but at full team capacity, saying yes would have meant months of distraction for marginal upside.
Founders say
“When we were four people I just did the work. Now half my week is calls I can't take back — do we hire her, do we bet on A or B — and I catch myself making them exhausted, on the fly, between two other meetings.”
Where you are today
- The biggest calls get made in the cracks between meetings, on whatever energy is left over.
- The same decision keeps coming back because no one's sure whose it was — or whether it's actually closed.
- You're still in every call, so the trivial ones drain you and the important ones wait on you.
Where you’re headed
- You spend real time on the decisions you can't undo, and move fast on the ones you can.
- Every big call has an owner and a moment it's settled — no zombie debates.
- You make your few high-stakes calls rested and deliberate, not reactive and depleted.
Why this matters
Jeff Bezos says a senior executive is paid to make a small number of high-quality decisions, not a thousand small ones: "If I make three good decisions a day, that's enough" — and Warren Buffett reckons he's good if he makes three good decisions a year. As you scale, your job shifts from doing the work to making the calls, and the weightiest ones — who to hire, which strategy to back — quietly make or break the company. That's exactly why Bezos guards his sleep and does his hard thinking before lunch: a decision made at 70% capacity costs far more than a task done at 70%. The all-nighter that shipped a module when you were three people is a bad trade once your real output is judgement.
What this means
- Know which decisions are yours to make, which to delegate, and which to escalate.
- Match the rigour to the stakes: move fast on reversible calls, slow down on the ones you cannot undo.
- Cut decision congestion — no repeated debates, no unclear ownership, no calls stuck waiting on you.
What good looks like
- You match rigour to stakes: reversible calls get made quickly, irreversible ones get real time and room for dissent.
- Every significant decision has a clear owner and a clear point at which it's closed — so it stops getting re-litigated.
- Your calendar protects time to think, and the big calls get made in good health, not on fumes.
Where founders get it wrong
- Spending the same energy on every decision, so a hundred small calls crowd out the handful that actually matter.
- Chasing full consensus — waiting for everyone to agree instead of getting aligned enough to commit and move.
- Deciding while depleted: pulling the all-nighter, then betting the quarter the next bleary-eyed morning.
Match the time to the stakes
Correlate the weight of a decision with the time you give it. Small, reversible calls — two-way doors you can walk back through — should be fast, or delegated outright. The big, irreversible ones deserve the opposite: space, options, real thinking — and a premortem before you commit, while changing course is still cheap. The failure mode is treating them all the same, so the trivial many drown out the vital few.
One of my own biggest regrets as a founder was being so busy that I never blocked time to step back and look at the whole thing. Protect a recurring slot for strategic thinking the way you'd protect an investor meeting — the decisions that shape the company rarely get made in the gaps between Slack messages.
Mindsets that make calls better
Strong opinions, weakly held
Commit to a clear view so the team has something concrete to react to — but hold it loosely enough to change your mind the moment better evidence turns up. A firm opinion moves people; the willingness to drop it keeps you honest.
80% alignment, 100% commitment
You'll never all agree on everything, and a company pulling in different directions is a nightmare. Get aligned enough — roughly 80% — then everyone commits fully, including the people who argued the other way. Disagree and commit.
Give dissent room before you close
Make sure everyone had a real chance to raise concerns and push back before the decision lands. Silence isn't agreement — it's usually the objection you'll hear later, at a worse time.
Get the company aligned enough to move
Aim for aligned autonomy: you define the problem and the why, and teams own the how. That's what lets a decision hold once it leaves the room — people know which direction to run without checking back on every call. The grid below is the quick diagnostic for whether you have enough shared direction and enough decision freedom.
Frameworks worth reaching for
- Six Thinking Hats — when a call is going in circles or one voice dominates, look at it from six angles one at a time.
- Double Diamond — when you might be solving the wrong problem, widen before you narrow: find the right problem, then the right solution.
- First Principles Thinking — when received wisdom is boxing you in, strip the problem back to what's actually true and reason up from there.
Run the decision: create, collaborate, communicate
Be explicit about which mode a decision is in. Create is the thinking you do to form a view. Collaborate is inviting the few people who should shape it to give input and dissent — while it's still open. Communicate is sharing the settled decision and the why with everyone who has to act on it. In a company of around thirty, most big calls run: founders and heads collaborate, and once that's done, it gets communicated to the team.
Credit: Outstride original
You don't only decide alone. Two sources worth pulling in: your personal board, for outside perspective on a call you're too close to, and your Super Self — asking what your ten-out-of-ten version would do here, and what's stopping you doing it now.
What you can do right now
- Block time for your biggest call this week. Put a recurring strategic-thinking slot on the calendar and give this week's one irreversible decision real, undistracted time. My own biggest regret was being too busy to ever step back and think.
- Sort this week's decisions into one-way and two-way doors. Reversible calls: decide fast or delegate them. Irreversible calls: slow down and spend your time there. The point is to stop treating them the same. Ownership Map →
- Ask for dissent out loud, then get commitment. Before you close the next big call, ask the quietest person what they'd push back on. Then aim for 80% alignment and 100% commitment — including from those who disagreed.
- Run one stuck decision through the Six Hats. Take a call that's going in circles and walk the group through the six modes one at a time. It usually surfaces the missing option or the unchallenged fear. Six Thinking Hats →
The toolkit
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