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Decision Spikes

How it works

A Decision Spike is a 2-day rapid intervention that takes your team from ambiguity to a clear, confident strategic decision — fast.
We use AI throughout the process to accelerate insight, alignment, and synthesis.

What it’s for

A Decision Spike is for teams who need to quickly evaluate options, cut through uncertainty, and make a high-quality decision in just two days. It takes the traditional Design Sprint approach and leverages the all the benefits of the approach for decision making. Typical uses include:

  • Prioritising between competing product or business opportunities

  • Choosing the right direction for a roadmap or strategic initiative

  • Assessing alternative solutions before committing resources

  • Aligning stakeholders around a single path forward

  • Turning vague assumptions into structured, evidence-based decisions

  • Prioritising scare resource allocation

  • Aligning priorities around company strategy and vision

Ideal for founders, product teams, strategy leads, and anyone who needs to move from “unclear options” to “decisively chosen direction” fast.

What you’ll get

  • ✺ Day 1

    Frame and Explore

    Define the decision challenge & context
    Share relevant data, insights, and evidence
    AI-assisted ideation to explore perspectives
    Capture and refine initial options

  • ✺ Day 2

    Align and Decide

    Evaluate and prioritise options against criteria
    Debate trade-offs and surface risks
    Align on a final decision with full group buy-in
    Create an action plan (owners, steps, timelines)

  • ✺ Day 3 (Optional)

    Validate and Prepare

    Run scenario testing or wider stakeholder review
    Refine decision and communications
    Hand over to team for execution & iteration

What we need from you

  • ✺ People

    About 4-6 willing participants.

    This should be a mix of decision makers and SMEs.

    This should include whoever needs to make, own or approve the decision, any key stakeholders whose input and buy-in is important, any SMEs who can help inform and validate decisions.

  • ✺ Time

    A full two days of the group’s time and attention.

    An in-person meeting works best for most cases, and is easier on the participants - but if that’s impossible for your organisation, we can work with you to organise a different structure remotely.

  • ✺ Context

    Part of the process is a deep-dive - so we’ll also ask for some background information and details - or experts who can pop in and provide this.

    We can synthesise this ready for the session - but we’ll ask you to share what you can in advance for efficiency.

Why a Decision Spike?

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Built on a Proven Framework — Evolved for Better Decisions

Inspired by the Google Ventures Sprint model, Decision Spikes focus only on the stages of a traditional Design Sprint that matter for clear decision-making — Frame, Explore, Evaluate, Decide — completed in just two days.

Through years of facilitation, the format has been specially adapted for decisions rather than design, removing heavy prototyping and sharpening the exercises to align teams quickly.

Modern AI accelerates the process further — clarifying the challenge, surfacing options, and stress-testing assumptions — giving teams a faster, leaner way to reach confident, evidence-based decisions..

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How Different Teams Use Decision Spikes

A Decision Spike helps teams move faster by enabling them to:

  • Leadership & Strategy: Align stakeholders and commit to a clear direction.

  • Product & Delivery: Decide where to focus roadmap, effort, or investment.

  • Marketing & Growth: Choose the strongest message, audience, or campaign path.

  • Ops & Service: Prioritise improvements and resolve operational bottlenecks.

  • Innovation & Commercial: Evaluate new opportunities with less risk and more clarity.

  • Startups & Scale-ups: Focus scarce resources on the choices that matter most.

AI Upskilling

A Decision Spike helps teams build practical AI skills they can use immediately. Teams learn how to apply AI to accelerate research, surface insights, broaden perspectives, and challenge assumptions — supporting not just faster work, but sharper thinking.

Throughout the process, we follow your organisation’s AI policies, avoid sharing sensitive data, and use tools that match the team’s comfort level. In this hands-on context, the team naturally builds confidence and capability with AI as part of the work.

The AI Difference

AI doesn’t just make a Decision Spike faster — it makes it sharper. It expands the team’s thinking by surfacing patterns, risks and possibilities that are hard to uncover in a typical discussion. AI broadens the range of options explored, clarifies assumptions, and reveals perspectives that might otherwise be missed.

During evaluation, AI strengthens the team’s reasoning by modelling scenarios, comparing trade-offs, stress-testing options and highlighting the implications of each path. It supports clearer prioritisation by combining human judgment with structured, data-driven insight.

It also accelerates planning by synthesising inputs, tightening communication, and reducing cognitive bias as the group converges. The outcome is not just greater speed — but more rigour, more clarity, and ultimately, better decisions.

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