First ask: can this be undone?

Some decisions are like doors you can walk back through. Trying a new supplier for one month, testing a different shift pattern or changing a product display are all reversible. Others are one-way: signing a long lease, hiring a senior person, taking a loan. Treat them differently.

For reversible decisions, decide quickly with the information you have, run a small trial and review. For one-way decisions, take your time, gather views and test your assumptions. Many owners reverse this and agonise over small matters while rushing big ones.

Count the cost of delay

Indecision has a price too. If you are waiting for a perfect answer, ask what waiting costs: lost orders, an idle machine, a team unsure of direction. Compare that with the cost of being slightly wrong.

A useful rule is to decide when you have enough information, not all of it. Write down what you would need to know to be reasonably confident, set a date by which you will decide, and stick to it. For example, 'We will decide on the second branch on the fifteenth, after we have the rent quote and the last six months of sales by area.'

Run a pre-mortem

Before committing to an important decision, imagine that it is a year later and the decision has failed. Ask yourself and your team: what went wrong? Write down every reason, without arguing. Then look at the list and ask which ones you can prevent or prepare for.

This works because people find it easier to explain a failure than to criticise a plan. It often brings out risks that polite enthusiasm had hidden, such as 'the key person might leave' or 'we had no cash buffer for the first three months'.

  • What could make this fail?
  • Which of these can we reduce before we start?
  • What early warning sign would tell us it is going wrong?

Use a simple weighted comparison for choices

When you are choosing between options, such as two locations or three software vendors, list the criteria that matter and give each a weight out of ten for its importance. Score each option from one to five against each criterion, multiply and add up.

The total is not an oracle. Its value lies in forcing you to say what matters. If the result surprises you, ask why; you may find that an unstated factor, like a relationship or a fear, is driving your preference. Better to know it.

Keep a decision log

For significant decisions, write a half-page note: the decision, the date, the options considered, the reasons, the risks and when you will review it. Share it with the people affected.

This helps in three ways. It clarifies your own thinking. It stops decisions being quietly reopened. And when you look back, you can see whether your reasoning was sound even if the result was not, which is how judgement improves over time.

Good decisions come from asking whether the choice is reversible, what delay costs, how it might fail, what matters most and what you decided and why. Choose one significant decision on your desk now, and apply these questions to it for half an hour. Over time, the habit builds a business where decisions are made at the right speed by the right people.