I had a call this week with a smart founder in Canada.
We got to talking about decision making and why so many people struggle with it. (Don’t believe me? Think about the last time you tried to make lunch plans with someone)
We talked through why this happens - fatigue, fear of being wrong, avoiding responsibility. Then he asked me how to fix it.
Decisions are like your junk drawer. It’s full of things you don’t need and one or two you do. But finding the exact right thing takes time. It’s probably hidden under something. Is it even the right thing? Will it actually fit? What if I pull it out and it doesn’t work? Better to just let whatever’s dripping keep dripping. It’s a small leak. More annoying than serious.
So you softly close the drawer. Until the leak gets worse. Now you’re desperately digging through the drawer looking for that thing. But it’s buried under even more stuff.
The decision you put off has become dire. And making decisions in dire straits is not the best way to make them.
I’ve watched this play out countless times. A founder knows they need to scale operations, but they keep opening that decision drawer, seeing the complexity - hire more people? Outsource? Build systems first? - and shutting it. Six months later, they’ve lost the market window because a competitor made the call in three weeks.
The decision didn’t get easier with time. It got harder. And way more expensive.
Here’s what I’ve learned building businesses across automotive, apparel, media, and franchising: most junk drawers have 3-5 real decisions buried in them. The rest is just noise.
The fix isn’t better decision-making skills. It’s getting everything out of the drawer and visible.
Here’s the three-step process I use with founders:
Step 1: Dump out the drawer. List every decision you’ve been avoiding. Don’t edit, don’t prioritize - just get it all visible.
Step 2: Sort by category. Growth decisions. Operational decisions. Market decisions. You’ll see most decisions fall into 3-4 buckets.
Step 3: Pick the ONE thing you need right now. You don’t have to solve everything at once. What’s the decision that, if you made it today, would unblock everything else?
Visibility breeds confidence. Once you can see what’s actually in there, the decision becomes obvious. It was always obvious - you just couldn’t see it clearly.
Will you make the perfect decision every time? No. But you’ll make it from a position of clarity instead of fear. And that changes everything.
If you’re stuck on a decision that keeps getting shoved back in the drawer, let’s dump it out together. The clarity you’re looking for is already there - you just can’t see it yet.