What does it mean that decision speed as a variable?

Sometimes deciding fast is more important than deciding optimally.

Example: You're choosing between two cloud providers for a new microservice. You've spent three weeks evaluating benchmarks, reading case studies, and requesting demos. Meanwhile, the team that needed the service has built a workaround, the market window has narrowed, and the cost of the evaluation itself now exceeds the cost difference between the two options. The decision wasn't wrong — the speed was. A 70% confidence pick on day two, deployed with a migration path, would have delivered value for nineteen days while you were still comparing dashboards.

Try this: Identify a decision you're currently sitting on. Write down: (1) your current confidence level as a percentage, (2) what additional information you'd need to reach 90% confidence, (3) how long that information would take to gather, and (4) the cost of delay — what value you lose for each day the decision remains unmade. If the cost of delay exceeds the expected value of the additional information, decide now. Set a timer for fifteen minutes, make the call, and write down what you chose and why.