Until your team has internalized the tradeoffs that matter most for your business, you either need to be in every decision or you need to be ready for a lot of unintended consequences.

Decision Filters close the gap by giving your team practical guardrails to make aligned, confident decisions at scale.

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The Signal (your clue that there's work to do):

You’re still the go-to for every signficant decision because your team can't confidently navigate the tradeoffs that keep coming up as you scale.

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You get pinged all day:

“Should we absorb this rush fee?”

“Can we approve this exception?”

“Is it okay to swap this material?”

“Do we move forward or wait?”

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If they don’t ask, they guess, and their guess is often misaligned with the business realities you’re holding in your head:

• Someone optimizes for speed but tanks margin.
• Someone protects margin but stalls a key client.
• Someone protects a relationship but undermines capacity planning.

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Cost to the business: stalled work, inefficiency, inconsistency and preventable fires.

Cost to you: cognitive load and lost energy spent on decisions you shouldn’t be making.

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The Root Cause:

Your team isn’t struggling with intelligence or initiative,

they’re struggling with unclear tradeoffs.

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So they default to:

• “Playing it safe” → unnecessary escalation.
• “Doing what seems right” → misaligned decisions.
• “Copying what worked last time” → sub[\-optimal outcomes.

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Here’s the thing: your team can’t make leadership-level decisions

if they don’t understand leadership-level tradeoffs.

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This is the gap Decision Filters are designed to fill.

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The Tool: Decision Filter

Decision Filters are a short list of guiding questions your team can use to internalize your tradeoff calculations and make decisions the way you do.

Each filter:

• Spotlights one critical tradeoff (speed, margin, quality, values, risk).
• Gives your team a framing question to run decisions through.
• Comes with a concrete example that shows when and how it applies.

Think of this as the “how we think around here” cheat sheet.

Below is a base set of five Decision Filters you can customize.

1. Time Sensitivity

Does this decision support on-time delivery and operational flow?

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When this filter applies:

Any time the team is deciding whether to say yes to a last-minute change, rush request, or internal delay.

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Framing question:

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Example:

A client requests a small change to a project already in motion. If the tweak can be absorbed without affecting install or launch dates, the team moves forward.

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2. Financial Impact

Does this decision make financial sense within our operating model?

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When this filter applies:

Any time there’s a discount consideration, scope creep, vendor change or cost increase.

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Framing question:

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Example:

A client pushes for a 15% discount to “lock in” a bigger order. Before agreeing to close the sale, the team runs the numbers and sees that at the requested price, the work is barely profitable.

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3. Quality & Reputation

Does this decision uphold our quality standards and protect customer trust?

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When this filter applies:

Any time there’s a shortcut, substitution or workaround being considered.

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Framing question:

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Example:

Ops finds a cheaper material or vendor with slightly lower specs. On paper, it saves money and keeps the timeline intact. But the product is more likely to fail earlier in the field. The team understands this isn’t just a cost decision -- it’s a tradeoff between short-term savings and long-term trust.

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4. Company Values & Standards

Does this decision align with our core principles and values?

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When this filter applies:

Vendor selection, partnership decisions, people decisions, anything that touches culture, ethics or brand promises.

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Framing question:

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Example:

A vendor offers a fast, cheap solution but has questionable labor practices. This isn’t a purely operational tradeoff, it’s a statement about whose standards you’re willing to align with. The team recognizes that “we don’t look away from this stuff” is part of how the business operates.

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5. Recoverability

Can this decision be easily undone if it turns out to be wrong?

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When this filter applies:

Any time the team is considering a new process, a new policy, a major client promise or a structural change.

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Framing question

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Example:

The team wants to pilot a new client onboarding step that adds time but might improve retention. If it’s easy to roll back after a month and doesn’t require redoing contracts or major tech changes, they can treat it as a low-risk test instead of a permanent shift. This filter helps them see the difference between “experiment” and “one-way door.”

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Optional Filters to layer in (if they apply):

• Customer Impact: Does this affect a key account or more than X% of customers?
• Scalability: Will this still work when we’re 2–3x bigger?
• Legal & Compliance: Does this introduce compliance or regulatory risk?
• Safety: Does this meet or exceed our safety and regulatory obligations.

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Decision Filters give your team a shared lens for balancing speed, cost, quality, customer impact, and risk the way you would. When these principles are explicit and easy to apply, your team starts making consistent, leadership-aligned decisions without slowing you down.

(Side Note: The next evolution is your team knowing when a decision stays with them and when it crosses into territory that requires you. That’s where Escalation Criteria come in. We’ll cover those in a future issue.)

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The Fix: Putting Decision Filters to Work

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1. Start with three real decisions that went sideways.

• One decision a team member made that frustrated you.
• One they delayed too long.
• One they escalated that you wish they’d just handled.

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For each, jot down:

• What actually made it the “wrong” decision or process.
• What you wish they’d considered before acting.

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You’ve just surfaced your implicit filters.

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2. Draft your first Decision Filter Stack.

Using the findings above:

• Pick 5 core filters that truly matter in your business.
• Customize your framing question for each (“Will this delay delivery by more than 72 hours?”)

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3. Define preliminary escalation triggers

Next to each filter, define:

• Green zone: Range within which team should decide and execute
• Red zone: Range that feels uncomfortable for your team to handle without your input — the outer edge of your comfort is the threshold for escalation. Define that for your team.

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You don’t need a 10-page policy. You need statements like:

• “Anything over a 10% margin impact gets escalated.”
• “Any delay beyond 72 hours on a key client project gets escalated.”
• “Any decision that shifts us away from safety, compliance, or values is non-negotiable and needs to be escalated.”

We’ll go deeper into Escalation Criteria later in a future issue. For now, this gives your team clear guardrails.

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4. Roll the Decision Filters out in a live working session.

Bring your leadership or core team together and:

1. Share the why: You want them to move faster, with more autonomy and greater confidence… and with guardrails to protect the best interests of the company.
2. Walk through the Decision Filters.
3. Practice with real examples from the last 30 days:
   • “Here’s what came up.”
   • “Here’s how the filters would apply.”
   • “Here’s what I’d expect you to decide on your own vs. bring to me.”

Make it collaborative: invite questions and edge cases.

Let the team pressure test the Decision Filters and make adjustments as needed.

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5. Reinforce through recognition, not just correction.

To make this stick, build a decision-literate culture:

• Spotlight team members who successfully use Decision Filters.
• Tie praise to priorities. Name the filter: “You protected margin and upheld our quality bar. That’s exactly what good looks like.”
• Reframe mistakes as data. When a decision misfires, review it using the filters and adjust them if needed.

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Why Decision Filters Work

• They kill stealth expectations. Instead of your standards being invisible and intuitive, they’re written down and shared. Your team doesn’t have to guess at what matters. You’ve told them.
• They reduce your cognitive load. You’re not making every call; you’re defining how calls get made. That’s a CEO-level upgrade.
• They align everyday choices with strategy. Filters operationalize your priorities so they’re baked into hundreds of micro-decisions each week.
• They build psychological safety with guardrails. When people know the boundaries, they’re more willing to move.
• They scale your judgment. Decision Filters are a way to replicate your thinking across the org without cloning yourself.

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Your Turn

Hit reply and let me know: If you had to name one non-negotiable filter today that you most want your team to internalize (time, money, quality, values, recoverability…), what would it be?

If you’re ready to build out your Decision Filters, send me a quick note and I’ll send you a worksheet to make it super simple.

Want help defining your Decision Filters and Escalation Criteria? A Signal Session is your best next move.

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In one focused session, we’ll:

• Diagnose your current decision bottlenecks.
• Surface the tradeoffs that matter most in your business
• Define your Decision Filter Stack and your Escalation Criteria.
• Develop a roadmap to operationalize decision-making across your org.

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If you’re ready to stop being a bottleneck and start scaling judgment across your team, book your Signal Session today.

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You can catch up on past issues any time HERE.

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