QUESTIONS FOUNDERS ASK
How do I make a hard business decision I keep putting off?
By Ivanka Menken, Strategic Mentor·Updated
Ivanka Menken uses four steps for a decision that keeps circling. Find the real decision, which is often not the one you think. Separate the signal from the noise. Put a cost on another month of waiting. Then commit to the first step you cannot take back, and write it down before you leave the room.
Why do some decisions keep circling?
Rarely for lack of information. More often the decision is framed wrongly, or the founder is protecting something, or the cost of waiting has never been made visible. More analysis feels productive, but past a point it is a way of not deciding.
What are the four steps?
- Identify the real decision. Often it is what to stop, not what to add.
- Separate signal from noise: which facts would change your mind, and which are habit or worry.
- Define the cost of delay: what another month costs in money, attention and momentum.
- Land it: the decision and the first irreversible step you take this week.
Can the decision be undone?
Ask this before anything else. If it can be reversed at a cost you can live with, decide fast, set a review date and move. If it cannot, give it the full weight of the cost of delay and the cost of reversal. Either way, it ends in a first irreversible step.
When should you stop analysing?
When one more week of analysis would not change the decision but would cost you another week. Early on, analysis is cheap and useful. Later, each new answer changes less while the cost of waiting keeps rising. That crossing point is where you commit.
What makes the decision stick?
Writing it down, with a date, and telling someone who will ask about it. In Ivanka's Intensive the session ends with the decision on paper and the first step agreed for this week.
How does Ivanka work on this?
This is the structure of Ivanka's 90-minute Strategic Clarity Intensive, and two tools prepare for it.
What else do founders ask about this?
What is the first irreversible step?
It is the first action that commits you to the decision, the step you cannot quietly take back. In Ivanka Menken's Intensive every session ends with it named and dated for the same week, such as telling the team, signing the contract or sending the price change. Without it, a decision tends to slide back into analysis.
What if I have several decisions that depend on each other?
Then one 90-minute session is usually too short. Ivanka Menken offers a Clarity Day for up to three linked decisions: six hours in three blocks, live on Zoom or in person in Brisbane, ending with a one-page written outcome. It costs A$4,500 ex GST. A single decision fits the 90-minute Intensive at A$1,500.
How do I know I am over-analysing?
Ivanka Menken asks two questions. What would one more week of analysis actually change? And what is waiting costing you each week? If the honest answer to the first is very little and the second keeps growing, you are past the crossing point, and the work now is to commit, not to research.
Can Ivanka Menken make the decision for me?
No, and she says so plainly. Ivanka Menken asks the questions, challenges the story behind the delay and shares her own experience of similar decisions. The decision stays yours, because a decision you made is one you will follow through. What she adds is structure and a firm close.