Deciding on gut feeling has a price. The problem is that it tends to stay invisible until the bill arrives — a launch that never took off, a hire that didn’t work out, an investment that looked obvious on the slide.
The Decision Diagnosis is a free D.Lab tool that makes that risk visible before the decision, not after. This guide explains what it does, when to use it, and how to read the result.
Decision Diagnosis
~60 seconds · 5 inputs · open method with cited sources.
Why this matters
According to SEBRAE (2023), 73% of small and medium-sized business managers make critical decisions on intuition. Intuition is great — until it becomes the only tool. When the cost of being wrong goes up (and with AI accelerating everything, it goes up), it pays to have a thermometer before you place the bet.
Most companies don’t fail for lack of capital. They fail for lack of a read on context at the moment of deciding.
What the tool does
From 5 simple inputs about the decision in front of you, the diagnosis returns two outputs:
- the probability of a high-quality decision in the current scenario;
- the range of exposure in R$ that’s at stake.
Every coefficient in the model is anchored in external research — McKinsey, Brynjolfsson/MIT, Bain, PMI, Kahneman, among others. The method stays open: you see where each weight comes from, no black box.
How it works, in 3 steps
- You describe the decision — context, deadline, and what’s at stake.
- You answer 5 quick inputs — no spreadsheet; it’s qualitative and takes ~1 minute.
- You read the result — probability of getting it right + financial exposure, with a read on each factor.
How to read the result
- High probability + low exposure: you can go ahead. The risk is under control.
- Low probability + high exposure: stop. It’s worth gathering data before deciding — this is exactly where a mistake gets expensive.
- Gray zone: the diagnosis shows which factor is dragging the risk down, so you can attack the right point.
When to use it
- Before a high-stakes bet: a launch, an investment, a key hire.
- When the team is split and no one has the number in hand.
- To decide whether it’s worth gathering more data — or whether you can already act.
Why it’s free
It’s part of the D.Lab way: open tools and content on the blog, implementation services when the context calls for it. The diagnosis is the front door — if it points to instrumenting the decision with data and AI, we can talk about the next step.
Run your Decision Diagnosis
No sign-up. In ~60 seconds you’ll see the risk and the exposure of your next decision.
Want to go beyond a single decision and put AI to work in your operation? See how it works, explore our services, or get in touch.
