Transforming Decision-Making in B2B Tech Companies

Jessica Hall
Sep 25
3 min read

Updated: 2 days ago

Ever sat in a meeting where the team debates for 45 minutes… and doesn’t decide? You leave frustrated. They leave confused. And tomorrow, the swirl starts all over again.

When teams don’t know how strategic goals connect to their daily decisions, they:

Get stuck in endless debate
Take defensive positions to protect themselves
Avoid decisions
Waste time on things that don’t move the needle

This is the direction disconnect.

It happens when big-picture strategy and daily execution don’t line up. You can see it in every planning meeting, budget conversation, and trade-off discussion.

And it doesn’t get solved by telling people to “take initiative” or “be more strategic.” It gets solved by giving them tools that help them choose well.

Why Leaders Shouldn’t Be Making Every Decision

If you’re a leader spending your time making tiny decisions, you’re slowing things down. When teams feel like they can’t move without your approval, everything bottlenecks.

The intention is good—they want to get it right and avoid getting in trouble—but the result? Progress stalls.

Especially in fast-moving areas like AI, that kind of hesitation kills momentum. You want your team to consult you when it’s needed and move when it’s not. That kind of clarity builds speed and trust.

Most teams aren’t dragging their feet because they’re lazy or lack initiative. They’re stuck because they don’t know:

What’s most important right now
How to weigh trade-offs
When they’re empowered to decide

We fix it by giving teams the tools to make aligned, confident decisions without having to guess what leadership would say. That’s where decision filters come in.

Decision Filters: A Tool for Speed and Alignment

Decision filters help your team make the kinds of decisions you’d want them to—even when you’re not in the room. They don’t spell out exactly what to do. That would be too rigid. Instead, they point the team in a clear direction that aligns with your strategy.

These filters reduce hesitation and overthinking. They make meetings faster and work way more fun.

I was inspired by the excellent book Simple Rules by Kathleen Eisenhardt and Donald Sull. Their research shows that in complex environments—like scaling startups or those in an AI transformation—the best way to drive consistent decision-making isn’t more process. It’s a few well-crafted rules that create just enough structure to guide decisions without killing creativity.

The 5 Types of Simple Rules

Boundary Rules: Set limits for what’s in or out.
Prioritizing Rules: Help decide what matters most.
Timing Rules: Say when to act or at what interval.
Filtering Rules: Clarify what to pay attention to (and what to ignore).
Stopping Rules: Signal when to pull back or quit.

How to Create Decision Filters Your Team Can Use

Use these formats to create your filters. If you come up with one I missed, please let me know!

Format	Use When	Example
X over Y	You want to signal a clear trade-off where both matter, but one wins.	Agile Manifesto: “Working software over comprehensive documentation”
Solve for X with Y in mind	You want to prioritize one thing while keeping another as a constraint.	Intuit: “Celebrate data while respecting user and device context”
Balance X and Y	You want both elements held in healthy tension, not one dominating.	Fjord: “Emotion and logic”
Avoid Y	You want to mark a clear “red line” and help the team spot traps.	The Zen of GitHub: “Avoid administrative distraction”
Emphasize X	You want to highlight a single, recurring principle or value.	Spina CMS: “Configuration happens in code”
If X, then Y	You want to show conditional logic or dependencies in decisions.	Bain: “Any unit that generates more than 80% of the demand for a shared service will have responsibility for managing that service.”
Always X	You want to state a non-negotiable principle that overrides other filters.	Opower: “Always lead to action”

Create no more than three and evolve over time. A startup will focus the most on revenue, while a larger company needs to balance serving existing customers and generating revenue.