You have probably read enough about the strategic decision making process to be skeptical of one more framework. Most of them sound great on the whiteboard and then quietly fall apart at the exact moment you need them: when the vision is clear, the team agrees on the direction, and someone asks, “Okay, so what do we actually do on Monday?”
That moment is where good strategies go to die. Not because the strategy was wrong, but because nobody built the bridge between “here is where we want to go” and “here is the specific action we are committing to, given the money, time, and people we actually have.”
This article is about that bridge. In Instant Competence, it has a name: Step 5 — Pragmatic Solution Development and Preliminary Decision-Making. It is the step that turns a direction into a decision.
Why Most Strategic Decisions Stall Between Vision and Action
Picture a leadership team that has done the hard thinking. They know the problem: revenue from their largest segment is flattening. They have agreed on the direction: deepen relationships with existing customers instead of chasing new logos. Everyone nods. The meeting ends.
Three weeks later, nothing has happened. Or worse, five different things have happened, launched by five different people, each interpreting “deepen relationships” in their own way. One person is planning a customer conference. Another is redesigning the onboarding emails. A third is building a loyalty discount nobody approved.
The team did not have a strategy problem. They had a resolution problem. They stopped at a low-resolution answer and treated it as a decision.
Instant Competence describes this gap with a memorable image:
“Once we’ve identified the correct haystack, there’s still more work to find the golden needle that represents our precise solution. We’re in the right house; now it’s time to find the right room.”
Earlier in the framework (Step 4), you build a solution template: the boundaries of what a good answer looks like. That tells you which city, which neighborhood, which house. It is an essential step that must not be skipped. But a template is not a decision. You cannot execute “strengthen customer relationships.” You can execute “hold a quarterly review call with each of our top 20 accounts, led by the account owner, starting in November.”
The difference between those two sentences is the entire value of a real strategic decision making process.
The Strategic Decision Making Process in Five Moves
The book lays out Step 5 as a short, repeatable sequence:
“We start with our identified solution template, generate a list of practical options, and evaluate these options against our constraints. Then we apply our preferred decision-making tools and create an action plan with a step-by-step procedure.”
Here is how each move works in practice.
1. Start from the solution template, not a blank page
Blank-page brainstorming feels creative, but it produces noise. If your earlier work established that the answer must, for example, strengthen investor relationships to increase funding, then every option you generate must live inside that boundary. The template is a filter. It keeps you from wrestling around in the wrong pile.
2. List practical options
Now get concrete. Instant Competence walks through this exact scenario: a start-up that needs funding and has decided that investor relationships are the knob to turn. The practical options it lists include:
- Scheduling regular update meetings with current investors
- Developing a new investor communications strategy emphasizing recent successes and future potential
- Creating premium investor reports with detailed analytics and progress stats
- Organizing networking events to attract potential investors
The test: if you cannot imagine someone on your team starting the work tomorrow, the option is still too abstract.
3. Evaluate the options against your constraints
This is where the word pragmatic earns its place. Every option runs into reality: team availability, budget, and timing. In the investor example, the constraints include how much time the team has to prepare communications, what budget exists for events and premium content, and whether the timeline lines up with funding cycles.
Constraints are not the enemy of good strategy. They are information. An option that looks brilliant but requires a team you do not have is not a strategic option. It is a wish.
4. Apply decision-making tools
Once the options are grounded, you compare them with tools that fit the problem. The book uses different tools for different situations, and that flexibility is the point. For the investor example, it applies:
- ROI analysis — estimating returns, like increased funding, relative to the cost and effort of each method
- A prioritization grid — rating each option on cost, impact, and feasibility to decide the sequence of execution
- Cost-benefit analysis — weighing the value of new connections from an event against its costs
For a culture problem, the tools shift to employee feedback analysis and an effort-impact chart. For an innovation problem, ROI forecasting and policy analysis. You do not need a proprietary scoring model. You need the right lens for the variables in front of you.
5. Narrow to one solution and write the action plan
This is the move most teams skip, and it is the one that matters most. You narrow down to one. Not three parallel initiatives, not “let’s try a bit of everything.” One.
In the investor example, the analysis points to regular update meetings with current investors, because, as the book puts it, “regular personal engagement adds significant value and can be implemented immediately with relatively few resources.” The flashy option (networking events) loses to the one that is cheap, fast, and effective.
Then you write the plan: identify the talking points, set a recurring schedule (quarterly, for example), build an agenda template, assign an owner, create a feedback loop, and monitor the impact on relationships and funding. Now the decision is real. Someone owns it, and you will know whether it worked.
A Real Example: How This Played Out at Holy Habits
Drago Dimitrov uses this step in his own company. In Chapter 8 of Instant Competence, he describes the founding problem behind Holy Habits, the Catholic spiritual formation app he runs as CEO: people want to grow in faith but struggle to know what to do next, and there are far more people seeking spiritual direction than there are spiritual directors.
The low-resolution template was clear early: build a technological tool that clarifies the path to spiritual growth. But that is a haystack, not a needle.
Step 5 forced sharper questions. With the rise of AI, a new option appeared: instead of users assigning habits to themselves, the app could generate habits tailored to each user. Then the pragmatic test, in the book’s words:
“This is great, but is it a knob that we can truly turn?”
The answer depended on constraints and resources. The team did not need to invent spiritual content from scratch; they could draw on two thousand years of Church tradition. They had product and UX experience. And they had a business partner with decades of published books and conference material. The specific solution came from combining what was desirable with what was actually within reach.
That is the pattern. Strategy says where. Step 5 asks what, exactly, given what we have.
What Step 5 Eliminates From Your Decision
The central theme of Instant Competence is turning “unconscious incompetence” (not knowing what you don’t know) into competence by systematically eliminating unknowns. The book names the specific blind spots Step 5 removes:
- Uncertainty in solution feasibility — Can we actually do this with our real constraints and resources?
- Unclear prioritization — Which option comes first, and why?
- Risk and outcome prediction — What are the likely impacts of each option?
- Alignment with values and objectives — Are these actions consistent with the broader strategic goals?
- Concrete actionable steps — How, practically, do we implement this?
If your team cannot answer all five of those questions, you do not have a decision yet. You have a direction.
One honest note from the book is worth repeating. When you read the examples, the action plans can seem to “come out of nowhere.” They don’t. As Drago writes, the solutions emerge “from the expanded pocket of awareness you’ve been creating” in the earlier steps: defining the problem, clarifying values, and mapping the system’s knobs. Step 5 is fast when the earlier work is done well. It is painful when it isn’t.
Try This: A 20-Minute Step 5 Session for Your Next Decision
Take one strategic direction your team has agreed on but not yet executed. Then work through this with a pen or a shared doc:
- Write the template in one sentence. “Our solution must ___.” If you can’t write it, go back a step before going forward.
- List four practical options. Each must be specific enough that someone could start it tomorrow.
- Write the constraints next to each option. People, budget, and time. Be honest about which options only work in an imaginary company.
- Pick one or two tools. A quick impact-effort grid is usually enough. Score each option high, medium, or low on both axes.
- Choose one. Say it out loud: “We are doing this, and not those.”
- Write five action steps with an owner and a date. Add one line on how you will measure whether it worked.
Twenty minutes, one decision, one owner. That is often the difference between a strategy that ships and one that lives forever in a slide deck.
The Real Point of a Strategic Decision Making Process
Instant Competence sums up the step this way:
“Step 5 is the crucial phase where vision transforms into tangible actions. It’s about finding the best possible path forward, within the realm of practical constraints, that aligns with the broader strategic objectives established earlier in the process.”
A good strategic decision making process doesn’t give you more options. It gives you fewer, better ones, and then it makes you commit. Vision without that step stays a nice idea.
Ready to Think Differently?
The approach in this post is Step 5 of Drago Dimitrov’s Instant Competence system, a 7-step method for leaders who need to make the right call even when the path isn’t clear. The book covers all seven steps, 10 advanced analytical tools, and 14 solution archetypes, with case studies and practical exercises.
Read Instant Competence to get the complete system. It’s available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook.
Or start with the free Clarity Worksheet, a guided tool for defining and solving your most pressing challenge.
If your decisions involve evaluating companies (as an investor or an operator), Drago’s companion book, What Does This Company Do?, applies the same thinking to business analysis.