We decide before we choose?

In business, we talk about decisions as if they happen at the moment of choice. Options on the table. Trade-offs discussed. Arguments weighed. A direction selected.

But what if that moment is already too late? What if, technically, the decision has already happened - not consciously, not deliberately, but somatically, before we ever begin to choose?

Long before criteria are defined, the organism has already intervened. Through prior experience. Through learned risk thresholds. Through fear, ambition, loyalty, identity, values. Through what has been rewarded before - and what has been punished.

By the time we reach the moment we call “choice,” we are no longer choosing freely. We are selecting from what still feels viable inside a narrowed field.

This is the distinction we rarely make in business: Choosing is selecting between visible options. Deciding is determining what becomes selectable in the first place.

Decisions form when certain possibilities quietly drop out - not because they were evaluated and rejected, but because they became too costly to hold. Costly to reputation. Costly to identity. Costly to coherence. Costly to safety.

This is why many decisions feel rational and inevitable at the same time. Why some alternatives never quite qualify. Why disagreement often arrives late, when it already feels disruptive. The choice looks deliberate. But the real decision didn’t happen when we selected. 

It happened when the field stopped being open - before options are compared, before criteria are finalized, before alternatives are allowed to compete on equal ground.

If this is true, then free will in business needs to be redefined. Free will is not the ability to choose anything. It is the capacity to notice when the organism has already decided - and to delay acting on that decision long enough for judgment to emerge.

More data at the moment of choice won’t reopen the field, improving. Better criteria won’t recover what was excluded earlier. Faster alignment won’t fix a narrowing that already happened. 

Because the critical move is not which option we choose, but when the organism decides it’s time to stop looking - often unintentionally.

This shifts what leadership actually means. Not deciding faster. Not choosing better. But noticing when closure feels comfortable too early.

Free will in business is the ability to pause before acting on the first internal decision. To notice when something already feels “decided” — and to resist executing it too fast.

That pause is uncomfortable. Because it keeps uncertainty alive a little longer. Because it allows questions that might complicate things. Because it delays turning a direction into identity.

That’s where judgment lives. The real leverage point is before the choice. Before options quietly disappear.

Before comfort starts to look like clarity. Before “we’re ready” replaces “are we still thinking?”

Intervention at this point doesn’t influence what gets chosen. It makes visible what has already been excluded — often by fear, habit, or past reward.

When that space closes too early, choice still happens. But it becomes procedural. Efficient. Safe. And no longer formative.

That explains a lot.

—

One way of seeing.

For now.