Collected Heuristics and Decision Filters

Key Principle

A consolidated catalog of Brenneman's heuristics organized by use case. These are the portable rules — the ones you can apply on a Tuesday afternoon without having to remember the framework. They span business, finance, hiring, communication, life-pruning, and decision velocity. Use them as a checklist; use them as a filter; use them as the language for explaining decisions to a team.

Why This Matters

Brenneman's frameworks (Five Steps, Go Forward Plan, Fortress Balance Sheet) describe what to do. These heuristics describe how to decide in real time when the framework leaves room for judgment. Without them, "execute the Five Steps" devolves into committee work; with them, decisions get made and corrected. Pair this file with Implementation Playbook — Running All Five Steps in Parallel — the playbook gives the sequence, this gives the inline filters.

Diagnostic Filters

Acceptance Tests (taking on a new role or decision)

• One-page-plan test (acceptance test for a CEO job): Can you write the four-cornerstone plan (Market / Financial / Product / People) on one page, with 80–90% confidence in the key value drivers? If not, do not accept the job (Step 1: Have a Plan and Track Your Progress).
• Three diagnostic questions (stop doing things that lose money): (1) Have I ever made money doing that? (2) Will I ever? (3) Will it ever be worth my efforts? Three no's → stop (Step 3: Money In, Not Money Out).
• Willingness-to-pay test (defining your core): What is on the customer's one-page list of what they'll actually pay extra for? If you can't name it, you don't yet know your core (Step 3: Money In, Not Money Out).
• Five Fs decision filter (personal commitments): Faith → Family → Friends → Fitness → Finance, in priority order. When a lower-F goal conflicts with a higher-F goal, the lower yields. Default for new commitments: no, unless aligned (Step 1: Stay Focused with Some Simple Life Rules).

Hiring Tests

• Fly Across the Atlantic Test: Would you energetically fly an 8-hour flight next to this person? Screens for energizing, servant-leader fit (Step 4: Build a Team).
• IQ Dipstick Test: Quick intelligence screen — if it's not present, skip the rest (Step 4: Build a Team).
• Network-first hiring: Hire from your network — B and C players never hire A players, so the top must be A or the rest can't be (Step 4: Build a Team).
• Three hiring criteria (from HBR Continental reprint): IQ, drive, team play (Appendix).

Empowerment Preconditions

A person is empowered only when all four are present:

1. Clear expectations
2. Performance feedback
3. Felt caring
4. Shared upside

If any one is missing, you are abandoning not empowering (Step 5: Let the Inmates Run the Asylum).

Operating Maxims

Speed and Decision Velocity

• 20 decisions a day; expect 2 wrong; fix them. Beats one perfect decision a month (Right Away and All At Once chapter).
• "Do it fast, do it right away, do it all at once. Do it now!" — the book's titular maxim, from a Continental baggage handler (Appendix HBR).
• Make your mistakes early. Front-load decisions in the first 12 months to create recovery slack (Right Away and All At Once chapter).
• The speed of the boss is the speed of the team. — Iacocca, cited as epigraph in the synthesis chapter.

Communication

• Tell everybody everything. Continental's transparency rule — including bad news (Appendix HBR).
• Deliver bad news in person, never via memo. The Greensboro hub-closing test (Appendix HBR).
• Three-response email protocol: Yes / reasoned no / time-boxed deferral. No black holes (Step 5: Let the Inmates Run the Asylum).
• Jackhammer communication. Relentless repetition of the Go Forward Plan — weekly voicemail, voice-over-text, every meeting (Step 5).

Capital and Cash

• Never run out of cash. Universal failure mode — businesses, individuals, churches, governments all die the same way (Step 2: Build a Fortress Balance Sheet).
• Match debt maturities to asset lives. Otherwise you'll refinance into a closed credit window (Step 2).
• Refinance through open windows; seek expert credit advice. Maturity stack discipline (Step 2).
• Calibrate leverage to Goldilocks. Too much kills you; too little leaves returns on the table — Home Depot mid-2000s is the under-leverage cautionary case (Step 2).
• Cash is king. Paper equity evaporates when prices fall and loans get called (Step 2; Trammell Crow / Alfa cases).

Personal Finance Rules

1. Budget and keep a cash cushion. "What gets measured gets managed" (Step 2: Choose Freedom).
2. No consumer or auto debt. Borrowing against depreciating assets is mathematical destruction.
3. Education payback analysis. Backward-plan: will earnings justify the loan?
4. Cap housing at 20% of gross. Above it, no slack for anything else.
5. Minimum 10% savings + 10% giving. Floor, not target.

Financial Finish Line

• (Peak annual spend + 10% give + 10% save) ÷ 5% return = your number. Beyond it, surplus goes to generosity (Step 2: Choose Freedom).
• Cap any single charity at 10% of your giving budget. Prevents dependence (Step 3: Money Out, Not Money In).

Growth and Strategy

• Revenue is always blue chip; cost cuts are always white chips. Growth carries ~4× the market multiple of cost-driven profit (Step 3: Money In, Not Money Out).
• Stop doing things that lose money before chasing new categories (Step 3).
• Focus on your core (Profit from the Core / Zook) before considering adjacent M&A (Step 3).
• Make your own storms. Counter-cyclical investment when competitors are wounded (Step 1; Generac case).

Team Building

• Sled Dog Principle: In a turnaround, expect to keep ~1 in 4 senior leaders; the inverse in good-to-great (Step 4).
• Trust but verify. Empower with autonomy plus Go Forward Plan accountability (Step 4).
• Trust is a 365-days-a-year commitment. Tested by the hardest conversation, not the easy ones (Appendix HBR).
• The 4-Key-Questions sequence: Structure → Selection → Empowerment → Compensation. Out of order, none of the four work (Step 4).

Warning Signals (when something is wrong)

• You can't write the plan on one page. You don't yet understand the business.
• Your senior team contains an Eeyore you've tolerated. Others are watching what you tolerate.
• You're cutting costs that touch the product. You're feeding the Doom Loop.
• You're delivering bad news by memo. Cultural authenticity is collapsing.
• Your white chips are crowding out your blue chips. Drift outpaces correction.
• You're a "Tickled Tither." Financial generosity is substituting for time and interior commitment.
• You're sequencing the Five Steps. You're choosing the audience's question over the right one.

Leadership Acid Tests

• Holy / Just / Compassionate: For high-stakes decisions, ask whether the answer is all three. Used by Brenneman as a personal acid test (Step 4: Life; Step 5: Life).
• Résumé virtues or eulogy virtues? David Brooks distinction — which is this decision building? (Introduction; Step 5 Life).
• Reflected Glory. The highest return is credit absorbed by people you mentored, returning to you. Optimize for it (Step 5 Life).

Key Quotes

"Do it fast, do it right away, do it all at once. Do it now!" — Greg Brenneman quoting a Continental baggage handler (Appendix, HBR 1998)

"A man in debt is so far a slave." — Ralph Waldo Emerson, cited (Step 2: Choose Freedom)

"Give a lot, expect a lot, and if you don't get it, prune." — Tom Peters epigraph (Step 4: Build Your Life Team)

"Define reality first, say thank you last, and in between be a servant." — Max De Pree, cited (Step 4: Build a Team)

Related References

• Implementation Playbook — Running All Five Steps in Parallel — the sequence; pair with this file as the per-decision filter set
• The Five Steps and the Right Away / All At Once Discipline — the framework these rules operate within
• The Continental Airlines Turnaround (1995–1998 HBR Reprint) — the case where most of these rules were forged