Coaching practices for And Then What Decision Making

Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For And Then What Decision Making, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.

Does this sound like the set of challenges you might be facing?

• I tend to lock in on a decision the moment the first result looks good and just stop there, and I want to actually keep going
• I tend to decide on my own and then use the meeting just to announce it
• I’m facing a big decision and I keep weighing only how it plays out over the next year or two
• I agonize for days over tiny choices I could undo in a second, then rush the big ones I can’t take back
• I keep getting burned by choices that looked great at first and then went sideways weeks later

Practices that may help

1. Ask “and then what?” three times
   Don’t stop at the first consequence — follow the chain at least two steps further.
   Second-Order Thinking: And Then What?
2. Second-Order Thinking: And Then What?
   Second-order thinking, a discipline associated with investor Howard Marks, means tracing the consequences of your consequences — asking "and then what?" past the immediate result to the reactions, side effects, and feedback that follow. It is a reasoning heuristic rather than a trial-tested intervention, but it counteracts the well-documented human bias toward judging a choice only by its first, most visible outcome.
3. Make decisions through debate, not declaration
   Multipliers use real debate to engage the team’s best thinking before deciding; Diminishers use meetings to announce.
   Multipliers: How Leaders Amplify the Intelligence Around Them
4. The seventh-generation test for decisions
   Before a major choice, ask how it will affect people seven generations from now.
   The Good Ancestor: Long-Path Thinking for a Meaningful Life
5. Classify decisions by reversibility and stakes
   Sort decisions into low-stakes/high-stakes and reversible/irreversible before deciding.
   Decision Journaling: Learning to Decide Better Over Time
6. Always ask what happens next after the obvious effect
   For any decision, trace at least two steps of consequences before committing.
   Mental Models: Charlie Munger’s Latticework Approach
7. Parallel thinking drill: all hats in sequence for a real decision
   Run a real pending decision through all six hats in sequence to experience the full method before adapting it.
   Six Thinking Hats, Made Practical
8. Batch low-stakes decisions to reduce decision fatigue
   Group routine decisions into a single weekly slot rather than making each one as it appears.
   Task Batching: Grouping Similar Work to Cut Switching Costs
9. Decentralized command
   Push decisions to the people closest to the problem, bounded by a clear commander’s intent.
   Extreme Ownership, Made Practical
10. Recognize which decisions to defer or delegate
    Not every choice deserves your cognitive best — identify which ones merit serious deliberation.
    Choice Overload, Made Practical

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