The most expensive sentence in business is “I just need a bit more information.”
It sounds like diligence. Most of the time it’s hiding with a spreadsheet. You’ll never have 100% certainty — not before the price increase, not before the first hire, not before the offer you’ve been carrying around in your head for weeks. Whoever waits for 100% doesn’t decide later. They don’t decide at all, and the business waits with them.
My rule: 80/80
80% clarity on 80% of the information is enough to decide — if you know whether the decision is reversible.
That’s the whole trick. Reversible decisions (a price, an offer, a format) can be made at 80% because you can correct them. The few truly final decisions deserve more time. But most business owners treat every decision as if it were final — and that’s exactly what creates the backlog.
The five-minute check
Take the one decision that has been sitting on your desk the longest and answer three questions — in writing, not in your head:
- What do I already know? And what of that would actually change with more research — not in theory, but concretely?
- Is the decision reversible? If so, what does going back cost me? Usually less than another week of waiting.
- What does every week of not deciding cost me? Revenue, energy, attention — do the maths.
Nine times out of ten it turns out: the information is there. What’s missing isn’t knowledge. What’s missing is the decision.
What the research says
According to McKinsey, those who decide fast are twice as likely to decide well. Not despite the speed — because of it. Fast decisions generate feedback faster, and feedback is the one piece of information you can’t get by thinking harder.
Which decision are you running the check on? If you like, write to me. I read everything.
— Iva