I was on a call last week with a group of business owners. Someone asked what was costing their businesses more: not making decisions, wrong decisions, or delayed decisions. Almost every one of them said the same thing: delayed decisions.

The decisions they were stuck on ran from CRM choices to AI tool selection to headcount calls to capital deployments. From a friend stuck for six months on his CRM to a CEO holding off for almost a year on layering agentic tools across his organization.

When Mickey asked them why, the answer was identical every time: "Even if I made the right call, I don't know how to get started." People delay because they haven't planned, and they're afraid of the chaos that comes after.

In this episode, Mickey breaks down why this is the most expensive mistake she sees across organizations of every size, and the methodology she and her co-founder Kyle brought to LoyaltyOps from his special operations background: War Games. Built around Courses of Action, the framework walks through what every complete plan needs so the decision becomes a choice between plans you actually understand.

You'll hear the core components of a Course of Action, the rules that hold the discipline together, the rehearsal practice the Blue Angels and Tier 1 operators use that almost no business does, and a listener prompt that puts this to work on your biggest stuck decision this week.

Take the Operations Friction Diagnostic at loyaltyops.com/friction to see where decision-making is breaking down in your business.