A tough situation at work can pull you in several directions. You are trying to understand what happened, manage how you feel, choose what to do and respond to the people in the room. Your heart and your mind may be arguing. Your ego may have something to add too.
Trying to do all of this at once can leave you stuck—or push you into a decision before you have properly considered it. The idea in the video is to separate the work into three stages: understand, decide, then communicate or act.
Give each stage a different job.
THE DECISION FRAMEWORK
Explore first. Choose next. Then make the action clear.
01 / EXPLORE THE PROBLEMUnderstand
What is happening?
Look at the facts. Ask questions. Notice what you don’t yet know.
A clearer problem
02 / CHOOSE A DIRECTIONDecide
What are we choosing?
Compare options and make the trade-offs explicit.
A clear choice
03 / MAKE THE NEXT STEP CLEARCommunicate & act
Who does what next?
State the decision, the owner and the next action.
A clear handover
If new information changes the situation, return to the relevant stage. Separating them helps you know which job you are doing.
1. Understand the problem.
This is the stage for questions, data and exploration. What exactly is happening? What are we assuming? Which part do we still not understand? Before defending a solution, make sure you have a useful description of the problem.
It is fine to enter this part of a discussion unsure. You are there to learn. Treating every question as a commitment to act can close the discussion before it has helped you understand anything.
2. Make a decision.
Once the problem is clearer, turn to the solution space. What options do you have? What goal matters here? What compromises are you willing to accept to reach it?
This is a change of mode. Exploring possibilities is useful, but eventually someone has to make the choice explicit. A clear decision includes the trade-off, rather than leaving everyone to infer it from the discussion.
3. Communicate and act with clarity.
After the decision, the work changes again. People need a clear explanation of what was decided and what happens next. State the direction plainly, name the next action and make responsibility clear.
The distinction matters: being open and uncertain while exploring a problem can be useful; carrying that same ambiguity into the handover can leave a team unsure what to do. Separating the stages gives you room to think before you commit, and a clearer way to deliver once you do.
What this could look like in a meeting.
Imagine a project whose delivery date is at risk. Here is an illustrative example of keeping the three jobs separate.
ONE SITUATION / THREE DIFFERENT JOBS
A project is running late. Change the question as you change stages.
Understand
“What is blocking delivery? What must be ready, and what can wait?”First get a shared picture of the problem.
Decide
“We’ll keep the date and reduce the scope to the agreed essentials.”Make the choice and its compromise explicit.
Communicate & act
“Confirm the revised scope, name an owner for each item and agree when we’ll check progress.”Turn the choice into a clear handover.
A hypothetical example, not a report of a particular team or project. The right choice depends on the situation.
Try one change in your next meeting.
Before jumping into a response, ask: “Are we trying to understand the problem, make a decision, or agree how to act on one?”
At the end, write one sentence on the decision and one on the next action. If either is unclear, you know what still needs work.
Emotions do not disappear because you name the stages. The point is to give yourself enough space to understand the situation and choose a response, instead of letting the pressure of the moment do both for you.
Back in 2012, when I was all of 28, I started buybazaar.com — an online supermarket based in Chennai, India. It's a bittersweet story of the rise and fall of a company that at one point meant everything in the world to me.
Once I shut down Buybazaar, I spent a month deliberating over the various decisions I had made as a leader. I took a data-driven approach: nearly 89–92% of my decisions were good in retrospect. Not bad, right?
The 6.43% Gap
When I observed top leaders in larger companies, the best were making the right decisions at least 98.43% of the time. That 6.43% gap — much like the difference between the top ten cars in an F1 race — is less than a few seconds, but it separates success from failure.
Specially when you go up the ladder, even a single decision can undo years of good work. I noticed the attention to detail and the various perspectives that effective leaders factor in before taking an “informed” decision.
What I've Learned About Decisions
01
Ego Minimization
Knowing when to set your ego aside. Too much leads to bad calls, too little and you get walked over. It's a balance.
02
Data-Driven Thinking
Gather data, run experiments, think logically. Gut feeling is fine, but numbers help you see what you might be missing.
03
Groomed Intuition
Study, learn, build pattern recognition over time. Eventually you develop a sense for things — but it takes real work to get there.
04
Diverse Perspectives
Talk to people who think differently than you. Limited perspectives lead to blind spots. Seek input from unexpected places.
05
Deep Awareness
Know what you're good at, know what you're not. Understand the consequences of your decisions. Surround yourself with people who fill your gaps.
06
Failure as Fuel
Everyone fails. The useful part is what you do with it — reflect, adjust, and try to get better the next time around.
Looking back, the quality of your decisions is probably the most honest measure of how you did.