decision-making-under-pressure

Read [runtime](../../content/RUNTIME.md) and [advisory rules](../../content/policies/advisory.md) before applying this skill. Other Foreman layers and the catalog are in `../../content/`, relative to this SKILL.md. # Decision-Making Under Pressure TIMER. Every undecided decision carries a holding cost -- and most leaders dramatically underestimate it. Projects stall waiting for approval. Teams hedge because direction is unclear. Competitors move while deliberation continues. The holding cost is invisible because it appears on no balance sheet, but it compounds daily: in lost momentum, in eroded team confidence, in the narrowing of options that occurs while a leader searches for certainty that will never arrive. Clayton Christensen observed that the most dangerous phrase in a leader's vocabulary is "just this once" -- a phrase that makes ethical and strategic erosion feel costless. Thomas Davenport's research suggests that the question is rarely whether a leader has enough information to decide, but whether they have the courage to decide with the information they have. The cognitive science of decision-making -- Kahneman's System 1 and System 2, the taxonomy of biases -- is covered elsewhere in this system. What follows is the applied practice: the daily habits that separate leaders who decide well under pressure from those who decide late, or not at all. --- ## The Framework Practical decision-making under pressure operates through six habits. They are not sequential;...