midfire

The decision record for leadership teams

Better decisions,
made together.

Your team gives its honest read in a couple of minutes, before you commit. You decide with the evidence in view, and every big call comes back on the date you set, so the company learns what works.

Explore the demo

Time the couple of minutes yourself: answer a colleague's ask in the demo. No signup.

Midfire is the decision record for CEOs of 20 to 100-person companies: a strategy consultant's method on every decision, augmented by AI, with the team's independent read gathered before the decision-maker commits and a dated look-back that says whether the call was right.

Each step below names the research it rests on, and each claim links to where you can check it.

How it works

From the question to the look-back.

One person runs the decision and everyone else answers a few questions. Midfire drafts the analysis for you to edit, keeps the record, and brings the call back when it is due. Here is one decision from the demo, at Hartwell Machines, an 85-person manufacturer.

  1. 01 · Frame

    Frame the call in minutes.

    Write the decision in a sentence. Midfire drafts the frame for you to edit: the question, the paths worth weighing, keeping things as they are included, the line you will not cross and the date you need to decide by.

    • Every path gets the same scrutiny, the status quo too1
    • Everyday calls take a few minutes; big bets get the full treatment

    About half of the decisions Paul Nutt tracked over two decades were not in use two years later. The ones that lasted had weighed more than one option. Nutt, Why Decisions Fail, 2002. Read the guide

    Figure 1 The frame, drafted for you to edit.

    1. The question, in one sentence.
    2. Every path, keeping things as they are included.
    3. The line the decision may not cross.

  2. 02 · Ask

    Hear from your team before they hear from you.

    Ask the people whose read matters about the claims that decide it. Each gets one email, answers in a couple of minutes from any device, and learns no new tool.

    • Nobody sees another answer until their own is in2 Try it in the demo
    • "I don't know" is one click, so the honest answer is the easy one
    • Silence stays apart from never having been asked

    Once people can see each other's answers, their estimates converge and the group loses what each person knew. Collecting every judgment before anyone hears another's is what Kahneman and his co-authors call decision hygiene. Lorenz and colleagues, PNAS, 2011; Kahneman, Sibony and Sunstein, Noise, 2021. Read the guide

    Figure 2 The ask, from both sides.

    1. One email that says what is needed and how long it takes.
    2. One condition at a time, four ways to answer.
    3. Nobody else's answer until yours is in.

  3. 03 · Test

    See what would sink it while you can still act.

    Every claim the path rests on sits in one view, with what each person said and the documents checked against it. Before you commit, the strongest case against your path gets a hearing.

    • Every path gets a premortem: the ways it could fail, written down while there is time3
    • Disagreement shows up early, with names and reasons
    • A checked document leaves a receipt: the passage, the file, the date Read the commitment
    • You make the call on each condition: met, risk accepted or not applicable

    Imagining that a plan has already failed raises the number of reasons people find by about 30 percent, the finding behind Gary Klein's premortem. Mitchell, Russo and Pennington, 1989; Klein, Harvard Business Review, 2007. Read the guide

    c5Must be true · material

    The extra output is sold at list: the book absorbs faster delivery without discounting

    Where everyone stands

    • Elaine Whitfield It holds

      The book is 7.1 months, with two 24-week contracts inside it. Faster delivery is sold before it is built.

    • David Okafor At risk

      Sized against today's book. If the Chicago contract lands, twelve more machines arrive on top of it.

    What is your call?

    Risk acceptedMetNot applicable

    Figure 3 The test.

    1. Where everyone stands on one condition, with names and reasons.
    2. Your call on the condition.
    3. The strongest case against the path.

  4. 04 · Commit and look back

    Commit, then find out if you were right.

    When you commit, your predictions and tripwires are sealed with the date. The review comes due by email and asks two separate questions: did the call hold up, and did it work out.

    Judging a call by how it turned out, which Annie Duke calls resulting, teaches the wrong lessons. The forecasters who improved were the ones who wrote down a probability and scored it against what happened. Duke, Thinking in Bets, 2018; Tetlock and Gardner, Superforecasting, 2015. Read the guide

    Figure 4 The commitment, and the look-back on an earlier call.

    1. The prediction, sealed with its probability.
    2. Tripwires, set in advance.
    3. The call and the outcome, judged apart.
See how it works in detailWalk this decision in the demo

Built for a leadership team

Easy for everyone you ask.

One person carries the decision. Everyone else answers a few questions from an email, and anyone in the company can read what was decided and why.

The decision maker

Frames the call, asks for input, hears the case against, commits and owns the review.

The seat you pay for

The people you ask

Answer one condition at a time from an email, in a couple of minutes, with no tool to learn and no meeting to attend.

Free, unlimited

Everyone else

Reads what was decided, why, and what was expected, in the folders open to them.

Free, unlimited

  • Independent by default

    Each person's answer stays sealed from the others until theirs is in, so the first opinion voiced does not become everyone's.

  • Meeting view

    Put a condition on the shared screen with counts and no names, and the discussion starts on the question.

  • Who is involved

    See who was asked what, who has answered and who has not, on every decision.

  • What was decided, in one place

    Publish a decision's brief to the company. Collections keep every committed decision, month by month.

  • Follow-through that holds

    Review dates come back by email, each review checks the tripwires, and a daily or weekly digest keeps everyone current.

  • Drafts that know your company

    Describe what you do, your strategy and your competitors once, and Midfire frames every decision with it in mind.

The dice tax

What better decisions are worth at your size.

Published research puts a price on deciding without a routine: work aimed the wrong way, and calls that quietly fail. Move the dials to see it for a company like yours.

  • About half of organizational decisions fail.

    Nutt, 400+ decisions

  • "90% sure" managers are right about half the time.

    Russo & Schoemaker

  • Experts judging identical cases differed by a median 55%.

    Kahneman et al.

With 15 everyday calls a week and the full calculator's other defaults.

The average company~$690,000a year lost to decisions that fail and work aimed the wrong way
The top quartile~$460,000a year, deciding with real alternatives and clear direction
The difference~$230,000a year, for a company your size

The gap between the average company and the top quartile, from Bain's and Paul Nutt's published research. It describes companies, never the effect of a tool. Open the full calculator, with every source and assumption.

Trust

Your decisions stay yours.

What happens to your data, in plain words. The long form is on the trust page, in the privacy policy and in the terms.

  • Documents are read, never kept

    A document checked against a condition leaves a receipt on the record: the passage, the file name, a hash and the date. The file is discarded.

    Read the commitment

  • No training on your content

    Your decisions and documents go to the model provider to answer your request, and to nothing else.

    Read the commitment

  • Your record leaves as plain files

    Any member can export what they can open, from Settings, at any time.

    Read the commitment

  • Every change has a name and a time

    Answers, calls and edits are attributed and kept in each decision's history.

    Read the commitment

  • You decide who sees what

    Folders set who reads. People you ask see the decision they were asked about.

    Read the commitment

  • Hosted in the United States

    On United States providers, each listed with what it receives on the subprocessors page.

    See the providers
Read the trust page

Pricing

Pay for the people who make the calls.

Everyone who reads a decision or gives input on one is free, however many they are.

See pricing

$59per decision-maker, per month, billed annually

or $79 billed monthly · no minimum, start with one

  • 50 decisions a month per decision-maker, from quick calls to big bets
  • One pool the whole company shares
  • People who read or give input, unlimited and free
  • Export your record as plain files, any time

Guides

How good leadership teams decide.

Short guides for CEOs of 20 to 100-person companies, each answering one question with the research named.

All the guides

Questions

What CEOs ask before they try it.

The longer answers on data are on the trust page, and the words a decision record uses are in the glossary.

Does my whole team have to learn a new tool?

No. One person runs the decision. Everyone else gets an email with a few specific questions and answers them in a couple of minutes, one at a time, before seeing anyone else's view. "I don't know" is a complete answer.

We already keep a decision log in Notion. What does this add?

A log records what you decided. Midfire records what would have to be true for the call to work, who thought so before they heard your view, and whether it turned out right when the look-back comes due. Keep the log if you like it; the record is a different thing.

Does the AI make the decision?

No. It drafts the conditions the path rests on and the strongest case against you, and it grades each condition against the evidence on the record. A named person commits, and the record says who.

What happens to our documents and data?

A document you check against a decision is read once and never stored; the record keeps a receipt. We do not train models on your content. Your record exports as plain files any time. Hosting and subprocessors are in the United States, listed on the trust page.

What does it cost?

$59 per decision-maker per month billed annually, or $79 monthly. People who read or give input are free and unlimited. Each decision-maker adds 50 decisions a month, from quick calls to big bets, to a pool the whole company shares.

Is it built for a company our size?

It is built for companies of 20 to 100 people with a leadership team of four to ten. Below about fifteen people the founder mostly decides alone and the room is small. Above about 150, single sign-on and audit exports come up, and we add those when a customer asks.

Can I see it before I commit to anything?

Yes. The demo runs three fictional companies with real decisions, and it needs no signup. To run it on your own company, bring a real decision to a session with us: onboarding is hands-on today, and the first decision is done together.

Bring your next big decision.

Bring a decision you have to make this month. We frame it with you and send your team its first questions. Or step into the demo first: three companies, real decisions, no signup.

Explore the demo