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Sage: The Startr Guide to Choosing Right

A company is essentially two things: a group of people and a collection of choices. How those people make these choices is the art of running a business. This guide shows how we do it.

Rules of thumb, and general philosophy

Below you’ll find a collection of general principles we try to keep in mind at Startr when making choices. They aren’t requirements, and this isn’t a comprehensive checklist we go through whenever we’re faced with a choice, but they serve as frames, considerations, and shared practices to draw upon when we do the one thing that we need to do all day, every day: decide.
  1. Why are we deciding anything at all? Does a choice actually need to be made?
  2. Is the right person making this choice? Not the right role, but the right person with the right information, context, and insight? Who's merely chiming in?
  3. If we remove the immediate impact, how do we think we'll feel about this choice a year from now?
  4. Why hasn't this choice been made already? Why didn't we decide before?
  5. What's taking so long to make this choice? Why are we hesitating? What does that reveal?
  6. Why would someone else make a different choice? What's the other side look like?
  7. How easily can we reverse the choice?
  8. What was our first instinct on this choice? Are we now just walking around in circles trying to justify that gut reaction with data?
  9. What would happen if we just didn't make the choice?
  10. What happened the last time we made a choice like this?
  11. What are we looking forward to after the choice is made? What are we afraid of?
  12. How can we make this choice easier? What parts can we eliminate from consideration?
  13. Is there even a wrong choice?
  14. Do we anticipate making a different choice if we wait until tomorrow morning to make it?
  15. Is any choice better than no choice, or is no choice better than any choice?
  16. What other choices will be impacted by this choice?
  17. Will this choice eliminate the need to make other choices, or will it create the necessity to make even more choices?
  18. What missing information would lead to making a different choice?
  19. Will this choice make more work for people that don't have extra time for that work? Or will it eliminate work?
  20. Could this choice be a good one for someone else to practice making?
  21. When do we have to decide?
  22. Will this be a one-and-done choice, or will this be a repeating choice?
  23. Is anyone outside the company depending on this, or is this a choice of our own making?
  24. How does this choice impact customers vs. impact us?
  25. Is this primarily a data-based choice, or an intuition, gut-based choice?
  26. Would another opinion help or hinder?
  27. If we were forced to make a choice right this second, what would it be?
  28. Where do we think we'd be today if we made this choice 90 days ago?
  29. Is there anything in this choice we'd regret if we didn't take X, Y, or Z into consideration?
  30. Do you even care which way this goes? If not, why are you involved?
  31. When and how will we know whether the choice was the right one, or if it even mattered?
  32. When the consequences of our choice appear, are they likely to be visible with the naked eye or do they require a microscope to detect? If the latter, does it even matter?
  33. What principles are we bending if we make this choice?
  34. Are we asking multiple AIs to make a choice that one person should be making?
  35. Is the return on effort worth it?
  36. What gets easier if we make this choice? What gets harder? Will easier remain easier in the long term, or is it short-term easy but long-term hard? And vice versa.
  37. In the end, is this about money?