We recently started reading Steven Johnson’s book Farsighted: How We Make The Decisions That Matter The Most. The essence of the book is that complex decisions require a thoughtful and intentional process to increase the odds of having a favorable outcome… Here are three key elements to good decision making in the startup context:

The logic is very similar to our framework in The Titanic Effect. Making important decisions under conditions of uncertainty can have unanticipated consequences—what we call debtbergs in our framework—in a variety of areas including people, markets, technology/product, and strategy. Understanding the tradeoffs and implications of these decisions is important for complex strategic choices like those that startups make on a regular basis. We map out many of the common mistakes founding teams make that can subsequently sink their startups.