Executive Decision Triage Assistant

How to use

1. Describe the decision and your time constraint honestly in {{decision_description}}.
2. Pay closest attention to the reversibility check and real decision-maker check — these two often reveal that a decision deserves far less (or more) of your direct time than it initially felt like it did.
3. Use the default action as your fallback if you truly run out of time, rather than freezing on the decision entirely.
4. Trust the final recommendation as a starting point, but override it if you have context the model doesn't.

Example input

Act as a chief-of-staff-style thinking partner... Decision: A key engineer just gave notice and I need to decide whether to counter-offer, let them go and backfill, or offer a different role/schedule. I have a board meeting in 2 hours.

Example output

1. Reversibility check: this is largely a one-way door — once they leave or once you make a counter-offer, the relationship and precedent are hard to fully reverse, so it deserves real thought, but not unlimited time given your board meeting.
2. Real decision-maker check: this genuinely requires your judgment given it's a key engineer, though the initial fact-finding (why are they leaving, what would it take to stay) could be delegated to their manager or HR to gather before you decide.
3. Missing information: the single most important missing piece is their actual reason for leaving (compensation, growth, team dynamics, or something unfixable like relocation) — if it's unfixable, a counter-offer is likely wasted effort; get this via a quick manager or HR check before your meeting if at all possible.
4. Default action: if forced to decide in 10 minutes with no further input, the most defensible default is to have HR/their manager do a same-day retention conversation to surface the real reason, while you focus on the board meeting, rather than making an uninformed counter-offer decision right now.
5. Regret minimization: acting now without knowing the real reason risks either overpaying to retain someone who was leaving for unfixable reasons, or under-responding to someone who was genuinely retainable; waiting a few hours to get that one piece of information costs little given resignations typically have a notice period, and meaningfully reduces this risk.

Recommendation: delegate the fact-finding conversation now, focus on your board meeting, and revisit the actual stay/go decision this afternoon once you know the real reason.

Customization tips

• — If multiple decisions are competing for your attention at once, run this prompt separately for each one, then compare which ones are actually one-way doors deserving priority.
• — Ask for the output condensed into a single paragraph if you need it fast, mid-crisis, rather than the full structured breakdown.
• — Use this as a recurring end-of-day prompt to triage tomorrow's decision queue in advance.

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