What could go wrong with this decision?

When people sit down to answer this question, the natural move is to start a list. And that makes sense. What if the market changes before this gets off the ground? What if the supplier doesn't deliver? What if the person we're counting on leaves? What if cash runs tighter than expected? What if the timing is off? What if a competitor moves first? What if the customer doesn't respond the way we think? What if the team isn't ready to execute? What if the assumption at the centre of this turns out to be wrong?

All of that is worth doing. Every item on a list like that is real, and working through it is a legitimate part of making a better decision. But the list has a hidden assumption underneath it.

It assumes you are sitting down to make it in a reasonable state of mind, with enough time to think it through clearly, without anything else pressing on you. And that is often not the situation at all.

⚡ The risk that doesn't appear on many lists is having to make a decision under pressure.

Pressure comes from a lot of different places. Something that needs an answer by Friday. A supplier who needs an answer this week. A team that has been waiting and needs direction. A competitor who just made a move. A cash position that is making everything feel urgent. The discomfort of having a decision sitting unresolved for too long. The feeling of being the person who is supposed to know what to do.

Any of those - and several of them at once is not unusual - and you are no longer in the same position you were when you imagined sitting down calmly to write the list.

Pressure does two things to a decision, and they compound each other.

The first is that it rushes you. You move faster than the decision warrants. You skip the check you meant to do, cut the conversation short, accept an assumption you should have tested - and the whole time it feels like you are simply getting on with it.

The second is that it changes the way you think when you decide. Under pressure, people are less likely to weigh things clearly, more likely to anchor on the first option that looks workable, more likely to discount a concern that would have stopped them on a quieter day. Things get missed or dismissed that would not have been, and you often cannot see it happening from the inside.

Put those two together and you are not just facing the original risks from the list. You are facing them while thinking less clearly than you normally would - which raises the chance of mishandling every single one of them.

So the question "what could go wrong with this decision?" has a version that most people ask - what are the things, outside and inside the decision, that could go badly - and a version that does not get asked nearly as often.

What is the condition I am in while I am making it?

⚡ Pressure does not just add to the risk of a decision. It amplifies every risk already there.

🚀 What to do next

If this feels familiar, start here:

👉 Run the Second Look Decision Diagnostic to check your decision
👉Read about checking business decisions

👉 📖 Read more on Second Look blog