Next steps
Turn research into a bounded next action with an owner and review date.
Which route fits your situation?
1. Frame
- Core question
- What exactly are we deciding?
- Founder action
- Write one-sentence decision, date, responsible person, and at least 3 options
- Stop / go condition
- Do not continue if board/CEO authority or constraints are unknown
2. Evidence
- Core question
- What would change our mind?
- Founder action
- Reconcile customer behaviour, runway and rival hypotheses
- Stop / go condition
- If crucial sources are unverified, gather them before committing
3. Challenge
- Core question
- Who can disagree without benefiting?
- Founder action
- Run pre-mortem, map conflicts, choose internal or independent challenge
- Stop / go condition
- Escalate legal/securities/finance boundaries immediately
4. Commit and review
- Core question
- What's the least irreversible next action?
- Founder action
- Set cost cap, accountable owner, test and review date
- Stop / go condition
- Stop, modify or proceed on predeclared signals
Fit depends on your actual decision, the evidence and the terms of the engagement.
Inside this section
Download the research ↓First: what is the decision, and when does it become expensive to reverse?
The founder owns the decision.
Four-step decision path
Compare gate, core question, founder action and stop / go condition.
Decision-specific playbooks
Specialist threshold: if the runway reconciliation is contested, bring in a finance modeller; if the team is heavily invested in a narrative and the decision cannot wait, procure bounded independent challenge.
When a specialist saves time and money — without claiming measured savings
Choose a specialist when time is the constraint , a discipline is missing , incentives cannot be separated internally , or a single mistake could consume an irrecoverable share of cash, control or trust .
Adviser brief: send this before requesting a quote
Decision: [one precise question].
Close the loop
After the decision, archive the evidence version and set a calendar checkpoint.
Editorial self-assessment
Not independently validated