Anonymized case, generalized from situations encountered, to preserve the confidentiality of engagements.
The context
An executive had to settle an important strategic issue — an investment trade-off, a reorganization, a repositioning. He kept multiplying analyses, requesting additions, pushing back every deadline he set himself. As the pressure rose, he tipped into the opposite : agendas overloaded with secondary matters, emails handled first, everything except the decision that mattered. Neither he nor his professional entourage understood the blockage — he had never lacked judgment on any other subject.
What the diagnosis revealed
The mechanism wasn’t a lack of decision-making competence, but a double attempted solution that reinforced itself : the more he tried to rationally master everything before deciding, the more he froze — and when the pressure became too strong, he tipped into avoidance, which fed guilt, which in turn revived the need for control. A circle that closed in on itself with every attempt to solve it through “more analysis.”
The intervention
The work didn’t focus on the decision itself, but on this control/avoidance circle : helping the executive perceive the precise moment when the search for the “right” decision turned into flight from any decision. A gradual shift — from “I must know everything before acting” to “I can act with partial information and adjust as I go” — was tested through small short-term decisions, before being transposed to the central subject.
What it changed
The decision was eventually made — not because an additional analysis had made it obvious, but because the mechanism blocking it had been interrupted. The most lasting benefit wasn’t that specific decision : it’s the ability, since then, to spot for himself when he falls back into the same circle on a new subject — and to extract himself from it faster.