How to Make Decisions When You Don’t Have All the Information
There’s a quiet pressure that comes with running a business that people don’t always talk about. It’s not just the work itself, it’s the decisions. The constant stream of choices you have to make, often without having all the information you’d like, and without knowing exactly how things are going to turn out.
You start your business for freedom, flexibility, and the chance to build something meaningful. But along the way, you realise just how many decisions sit between where you are now and where you want to be. And most of them don’t come with clear answers.
So the question becomes: how do you move forward without getting stuck in overthinking, or swinging too far into risk?
1. Why decision-making feels harder than it should
There’s a piece of advice that gets shared a lot in business: If it’s easily reversible, decide quickly. If it’s not, take your time, and there’s truth in that.
But in reality, most decisions don’t sit neatly in those categories. They’re not obviously reversible or irreversible. They’re somewhere in the middle, a bit fuzzy, a bit unclear.
You might need more information, but you also know that waiting too long will slow you down. This is where a lot of people get stuck. You try to gather more data, you think it through again, you wait for clarity that never quite arrives, and in the meantime, progress pauses.
2. The role of uncertainty in business growth
One of the biggest shifts you can make as a business owner is understanding your relationship with uncertainty, because the challenge isn’t just the decision itself. It’s how comfortable you are with not knowing.
We all have different levels of what I’d call “uncertainty tolerance”. The amount of unknown we can sit with before it starts to feel overwhelming, and that tolerance isn’t fixed. It changes depending on what’s going on in your life, how much you’re holding, and what the decision means to you.
There are areas where you might feel completely comfortable not having all the answers, and others where even a small amount of uncertainty feels too much. Neither is wrong, but it matters.
Because if you don’t recognise your own tolerance, you’re more likely to make decisions from discomfort rather than intention.
3. A simple example of uncertainty tolerance
I noticed this really clearly when my partner and I were selling his house. We received an offer, and my immediate reaction was: accept it. Done. Move on. Certainty. He had a different perspective. He was comfortable waiting to see if a better offer came along. His tolerance for uncertainty in that situation was much higher than mine.
Neither approach was right or wrong. But they were different, and that difference shaped how we both responded to the same situation. This shows up in business all the time.
Sometimes you’ll push for clarity too quickly, choosing safety before it’s actually necessary. Other times you might stay in uncertainty longer than is helpful. The key is knowing where you are on that scale before you act.
4. Why you don’t need full clarity to move forward
There’s a common belief that before you make a decision, you need to feel certain, but in business, that’s rarely how it works. You often need to move forward while things are still unclear.
Not blindly, not recklessly, but without having every piece of information, and that’s where a different approach becomes useful.
5. The idea of decision “containers”
Instead of trying to eliminate uncertainty, you can work with it. One of the simplest ways to do that is by creating what I call a “container” around your decision.
A container gives structure to uncertainty. It sets boundaries around how much time, energy, and resource you’re willing to invest before you reassess. It allows you to move forward without committing endlessly, and it helps you balance progress with risk in a way that feels manageable.
Step 1: Understand the full picture
Before you create your container, you need to get everything out of your head. What is the situation? What are your options? What are the risks and potential benefits?
This is where something like a simple SWOT analysis can be helpful. Looking at strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Not to over complicate things, but to make the invisible visible.
At this stage, nothing is off the table. Even the ideas that feel unrealistic can be useful, because they help define the edges of what you will and won’t do.
The goal here is clarity, not perfection.
Step 2: Set your limits (time, energy, money)
This is where the container starts to take shape. You decide, in advance, what you are realistically willing and able to invest.
Not in an ideal world, not in a best-case scenario, but in your actual current reality. How much time can you give this? How much energy do you have available? What financial investment feels appropriate? These limits matter because they protect you.
Without them, it’s very easy to fall into the trap of over-investing in something simply because you’ve already started. The sunk cost effect.
By setting boundaries upfront, you give yourself permission to stop, pivot, or continue based on what you learn, rather than how much you’ve already put in.
Step 3: Match your options to your reality
Once you’ve defined your limits, you can go back to your list of options and see what actually fits. Some ideas might be too resource-heavy right now. Others might need to be simplified or scaled down.
This is where you start shaping something practical. Not the perfect version, not the final version, but a version that works within your current capacity.
Step 4: Set a clear decision point
This is one of the most important parts of the process. You decide in advance when you will review and reassess. A week, a month, three months. It depends on the scale of the decision.
This creates a natural pause point. It means you’re not committing indefinitely. You’re committing to a defined period of testing, learning, and moving forward.
When you reach that point, you can make a new decision based on what you now know.
6. Why this approach works
When you build a container around your decisions, something shifts. You’re no longer trying to remove uncertainty completely, you’re giving it structure.
You know how far you’re willing to go, you know when you’ll reassess, you know what you’re working with. That makes it much easier to take action, and over time, as you move through different “containers”, you gather more information, more confidence, and more clarity.
It becomes less about finding the perfect answer upfront, and more about making good decisions step by step.
7. The role of pilot projects
This is why I often recommend treating new ideas as pilot projects. Instead of committing to something long-term immediately, you create a smaller, more contained version.
You might limit:
The timeframe
The number of people involved
The scope of what you’re offering
The level of investment
This allows you to test, learn, and adjust without taking on more than you can sustain. It keeps things flexible while still moving you forward.
8. A different way to think about decision-making
If you take one thing from this, let it be this: You don’t need to have everything figured out to move forward. You just need a structure that helps you move forward safely.
That might mean:
Setting clearer limits
Defining your next decision point
Working with your actual capacity
Accepting that some uncertainty will always be there
Because progress in business rarely comes from waiting for certainty. It comes from taking the next step in a way that feels considered, contained, and sustainable.
9. How to make better business decisions with uncertainty
If you’re sitting with a decision right now, something that feels unclear or a bit overwhelming, pause before trying to solve it all at once.
Ask yourself: What do I actually need to know right now? What can I move forward with? And what kind of container would make this feel manageable?
You don’t need to eliminate uncertainty, you just need to stop letting it take over, and when you start working with it, instead of against it, decision-making becomes a lot less heavy, and a lot more possible.
