There Is No Easy Option

A leadership team I work with had been circling the same personnel decisions for weeks heading into their company all-hands. They had the data. Every option on the table hurt. They knew the numbers. They were not confused about what needed to happen.

They froze anyway.

Most founders don't freeze on hard decisions because they lack courage. They freeze because they're doing bad accounting. The real comparison is never painful action versus no pain. It's always this kind of hard versus that kind of hard. Once you see it that way, decisions that felt impossible usually become obvious — because the question shifts from *how do I avoid the cost* to *which cost builds something worth building.*

## The Paralysis Isn't What You Think

This company was bleeding over $170,000 every week. The math wasn't subtle. Their financials told the story clearly.

The leadership team knew what the data said. They were smart people. They'd been through hard things before. And they had been circling the same set of personnel decisions for weeks without making them.

I've watched this pattern too many times to call it a willpower problem. Founders who have the data, the capability, and the nerve arrive at a decision they've already made on paper — and then stop. Days pass. Sometimes weeks. The explanation is usually that they need more time, a better plan, one more conversation.

That's almost never the real reason.

The real reason is that they're holding a phantom on the ledger: the option that costs nothing.

## The Fantasy You're Comparing Against

Every frozen leadership decision has one.

It's the version of the problem where no one gets hurt, no money gets lost, no relationships change. Leaders rarely name it. But it's the number every real option gets measured against.

When the baseline is no pain, every real option looks terrible. Because every real option has actual costs.

This is why "we just need more time" is almost always avoidance dressed as strategy. More time does not produce a painless option. It produces a delayed painful one — with a carrying cost added on top.

At this company, the cost of cutting what needed to be cut was visible and immediate. Real people. Real disruption. That pain had a face.

What wasn't being accounted for: not cutting was already costing them. The lost contract wasn't a one-time event. It was a monthly subtraction. The no-action option had a real price tag — it just arrived quietly in the financials instead of loudly in a conversation.

The phantom — *do nothing, feel nothing, lose nothing* — was the only thing making the decision feel close. Strip it from the ledger, and the real comparison becomes clear.

## The Reframe: Choosing a Different Hard

Once you've deleted the phantom, you can see what you're actually choosing between.

It's not "painful action versus staying comfortable." It's never that. The real question is which of two concrete, costly options you're going to choose.

For this team, the real choice was: restructure now, or continue absorbing losses at a pace that would force a harder restructuring later. Both options were hard. One of them built toward something.

When the leadership team saw it that way — when the phantom was off the ledger — the paralysis dissolved. One of the senior leaders put a name on it afterward: *choosing a different hard.*

That phrase mattered not just to the executives making the call, but to the people receiving the news. It's honest. It doesn't pretend that what's happening isn't happening. It tells the truth about what the alternative actually cost.

This is not spin. It's accurate accounting. The choice really was between two kinds of hard. Naming it that way wasn't morale management — it was finally saying what was true.

## What Waiting Actually Costs

Here's what gets lost when you wait: delay doesn't hold either option open at the same price.

One of the founders I was coaching through this period was managing a post-contract strategic pivot — rebuilding toward a different customer segment — while dealing with cash pressure severe enough to threaten payroll. Two problems held at once. Neither resolved.

That's what the carrying cost of an unresolved decision looks like in practice. It isn't abstract. It shows up as focus that belongs on building, going toward damage control instead. It shows up as team uncertainty that compounds every week the question stays open. It shows up as exhaustion that makes the eventual decision harder to execute even after it's finally made.

When leaders wait, they don't preserve the status quo. They add a third item to the ledger: the cost of delay itself.

At $1M in ongoing annual drag, every week of delay was a quantifiable, irreversible subtraction. The number doesn't lie. Neither does the pattern.

Delay is not neutral. It is a choice with its own compounding price tag.

## The Long Tax on Choosing Character

The hardest version of this principle is when the right option genuinely costs more in the near term.

In one episode of my podcast, I walked through a decision I made to choose character over financial security. The downstream cost ran for the better part of a year. There was no version of that choice where I came out ahead on a short-term ledger.

The phantom in that situation was straightforward: choose financial security, and nothing changes. The real option — choose character and absorb the cost — was visible and expensive.

What the phantom accounting obscured was what choosing financial security would actually have cost. Not a dollar cost. A character cost. The kind you can't buy back. That cost doesn't show up on a spreadsheet until it's too late to reverse. By then, you're not choosing — you're paying.

This is what [forging courage in the WayMaker Code](https://jonmayo.com/forging-courage-the-sixth-tenet-of-the-waymaker-code/) actually looks like in practice. It's not a surge of resolve that makes the right decision feel easy. It's accurate accounting that makes the right decision visible — even when it's more expensive up front.

The principle doesn't promise the decision will feel good. It promises it will be clear.

## How to Decide When Every Option Hurts

When you're paralyzed on a decision, three moves cut through it. I've run some version of this in almost every coaching engagement where a founder had been circling the same decision for more than two weeks.

**Name both real options explicitly.** Not "act or wait." What are the two actual paths forward — with their actual costs written out? If one of your options is "nothing changes," look harder. Something is always changing. Name what it is and what it costs.

**Find the phantom.** What is the no-pain version of this decision you've been quietly hoping will appear? Write it down. Get specific about what you're imagining. Then look at whether it actually exists in the world you're operating in.

**Remove the phantom from the comparison.** Now, of the two real options, which one builds something worth building? Which pain produces an outcome you'd actually choose?

The leadership team I was working with didn't need a courage surge after that reframe at the all-hands. They needed accurate accounting. Once the phantom was off the ledger, the clarity came quickly. The decision they'd been circling for weeks resolved in a single conversation.

This reframe doesn't make pain disappear. It makes the right kind of pain visible enough to choose.

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The next hard decision sitting on your desk is probably not waiting for more information.

It is waiting for you to stop measuring it against a reality that doesn't exist.

Write down both options — the real ones, not one real and one fantasy. Put a cost on each. Then ask: which of these two kinds of hard builds something worth building?

The answer is usually obvious. What you do with it is yours.