Article
Making judgment calls without the analysis
Four decisions from one year of running the business, written up against the three-criteria filter I used to make them. One of them cost me $10K I had not planned to spend. Written cold, no AI.
A working memo, written by hand. Everything else on this site was drafted with AI against my own inputs and then edited by me. This one wasn't, which is the only reason it's here.
It's written in the Amazon narrative register, which is deliberately plain. The same three criteria applied identically to four decisions so you can compare them, no adjectives carrying an argument, and nothing built to be quoted. If it reads flatter than the case studies, that's the register doing its job rather than the writing failing at theirs.
Running a small business meant deciding faster than I could analyze. Payroll on Friday, a customer on the phone, an employee who didn't show. So I built a three-criteria filter to make the calls at least consistent, then wrote up four of them from a single year to find out whether it actually held. It mostly did. One of them cost me $10K I hadn't planned to spend.
The framework
When facing time-sensitive decisions with incomplete data, I evaluate three criteria.
Customer impact. I prioritize based on promises made to the customer, then retention risk, then schedule flexibility.
Revenue impact. I minimize short-term revenue impact and maximize long-term gains by assessing service frequency. Impacting a weekly job loses revenue. Impacting a quarterly job costs short-term revenue without long-term loss.
Operational viability. I evaluate options to load-balance resources and assess the opportunity cost of reallocating them.
Case: a strategic decision
Situation. I needed to determine whether I could commit to a large power washing contract. The revenue opportunity was $60K against normal jobs averaging $1K. It would take three weeks and require holiday and overnight shifts, and it was unknown how the equipment would hold up under that stress. I had a week to commit or pass.
Options. Pass on the opportunity. Commit with current equipment. Commit with a plan to rent additional equipment.
Decision. I committed the team using existing equipment plus some rental.
Why. Customer impact: our existing equipment could deliver better results than competitors. Revenue impact: a $60K opportunity against roughly $12K in deferred work, with the potential for future large contracts. Operational viability: staff agreed to the holiday and overnight schedule with bonus incentives and compensatory time off.
Results. The customer was satisfied, though equipment issues extended the timeline by 40%. Profitability came in $10K below projection because of those equipment problems. The expertise we gained led to four additional contracts at $5K to $8K each and a $75K follow-up. I used what I learned to buy better equipment, which cut 50% off the time on subsequent large jobs.
Case: a customer-facing decision
Situation. I received a customer complaint about an employee's aggressive behavior. The customer banned him from their sites, which took out 20% of his route. Similar complaints had come from other customers. He was also my only resource qualified for specialized work representing 25% of weekly revenue. I had to decide immediately whether to retain him or terminate.
Options. Retain and coach on behavior, covering the affected customer myself. Terminate immediately. Hire a replacement first, then terminate.
Decision. I terminated immediately, the day after the complaint.
Why. Customer impact: aggressive behavior toward customers violates trust, and multiple complaints indicated a pattern rather than an incident. Revenue impact: keeping him risked cancellations and long-term revenue loss that outweighed the short-term specialized revenue. Operational viability: I could cover temporarily while finding a replacement.
Results. I hired an experienced former contractor within days. Training cost me 25% of my own time, but service quality held and we lost one day of revenue. Customer trust came back through proactive communication and an apology, and that account grew by $18K over the year.
Case: an operational decision
Situation. Two jobs scheduled for one day, an aggressive but achievable timeline with two employees. One called in saying he'd be an hour late and arrived ninety minutes late. Both jobs could no longer be completed as planned.
Options. Wait for the late employee and start one job. Split both employees across the two jobs, with the first starting immediately. Assign one employee to an original job and reassign the other to pull later work forward.
Decision. I prioritized the job with a customer promise attached, had the first employee start immediately and finish it solo, moved the quarterly job to the following week, and reassigned the second employee to two jobs originally scheduled later that week.
Why. Customer impact: we had made a firm promise for completion that day. Revenue impact: the delayed job was quarterly service, a short-term loss with no long-term effect. Operational viability: reassigning the second employee kept both productive and eliminated a Saturday shift.
Results. We delivered on the promise and kept the quarterly revenue. We also eliminated the Saturday overtime and avoided customer dissatisfaction by communicating the schedule change before they noticed it.
Case: a people decision
Situation. As the business scaled, my operations manager started underperforming. I needed both an OM and a customer success manager, a role we didn't have. Cash flow ruled out increasing total headcount. Key quality initiatives were stalled until I resolved the personnel question. I gave myself a week.
Options. Terminate and hire a new OM, cash-flow neutral. Shift him to CSM and hire a new OM, cash-flow negative. Shift him to CSM, promote from within for OM, backfill the promoted role, cash-flow negative. Shift him to CSM and reallocate OM responsibilities across existing staff.
Decision. I shifted him to CSM and divided the OM responsibilities between my wife and my senior technician. She took the high-level functions like scheduling. He took field support and training.
Why. Customer impact: a CSM would drive quality improvements and strengthen customer relationships, and I'd seen people skills in my OM that I believed would carry over. Revenue impact: a CSM could prevent churn and drive upselling with no payroll increase. Operational viability: my wife and my senior technician had complementary skills that covered the divided responsibilities.
Results. Quality scores went from 80% to 95%. The CSM prevented ten account cancellations and generated an average of $75 a week in additional sales. Operational execution held with the responsibilities distributed. Better outcomes at flat payroll.
All writing