Cross-Functional Decision Check

Use AI to prepare questions for the people a decision touches.

Map the decision

Decision and intended outcome: ___

Constraints and facts we know: ___

Who benefits? ___ Who absorbs extra work? ___

Where does risk move? ___ Which metric could improve while the real outcome worsens? ___

One second-order effect outside our department: ___

Copy this prompt

Here’s my decision: [one or two sentences]. Known constraints: [permitted facts]. Map four things: who benefits, who absorbs extra work, what risk moves somewhere else, and which metric could improve while the real outcome gets worse. Then name one second-order effect outside my department. Separate facts I gave you from hypotheses. For each hypothesis, suggest a question and the person or team to ask. Do not treat the map as a recommendation to commit.

Worked example · fictional

Decision: cut customer-support hours to reduce cost. Benefit: lower staffing expense. Extra work: unresolved requests may reach account managers. Risk: urgent problems may wait longer. Misleading metric: cost per support hour improves while customer resolution time worsens. Second-order effect: account managers lose selling time. These are hypotheses to discuss, not measured outcomes.

Take it to the affected teams

Question: ___ Team/owner: ___ Evidence needed: ___ Response: ___

What changes in the plan after their input? ___

Decision owner: ___ Review date: ___ Proceed/change/stop: ___

☐ Validate assumptions with affected people. ☐ Check constraints the AI was not given. ☐ Compare the real outcome with the metric. ☐ Record unresolved trade-offs before committing.