The Decision Stack - by Martin Eriksson (Paperback)

About the Book

Every organization has a Decision Stack - connecting vision to strategy to action. When those decisions connect, you build momentum. When they don't, you go nowhere fast. This book shows you how to find the broken connections and fix them.

Book Synopsis

Most organisations have smart people, good intentions, and no shared context. The result? Teams that work hard but pull in different directions - and leaders who can't figure out why everything feels so slow. The Decision Stack fixes that.

The frustration is real. You've hired talented people. You've set ambitious goals. But somewhere between your vision and the daily decisions your teams make, the signal gets lost. Strategy lives in a slide deck from last quarter. Objectives don't connect to anything above them. And your teams - far from being empowered - are left guessing what "good" looks like, then waiting for permission to act.

This isn't an execution failure. It's an alignment failure. And in a world where AI is accelerating the pace of everything, the cost of that misalignment is compounding faster than ever. Your teams need strategic context to move quickly - and so do the AI tools you're giving them. Without clarity from vision through to action, neither your people nor your technology can deliver what they're capable of.

The Decision Stack is a practical framework for connecting the dots - from vision to strategy, strategy to objectives, objectives to the decisions your teams make every day. It's not another layer of process. It's fewer, better, and more connected ways of creating direction - so that everyone at every level makes better decisions, faster, without waiting for permission. That's how you turn strategic clarity into real momentum.

Review Quotes

"The company stack is changing fast, and The Decision Stack outlines how we capture the momentum and make our ideas happen better and faster than ever before."

-Scott Belsky, Former CPO of Adobe

"Most companies don't have an execution problem - they lack sufficient shared context to execute quickly. The Decision Stack gives leaders a practical framework for sharing more context."

-Christina Cacioppo, Founder and CEO of Vanta

"The Decision Stack offers a compelling mental model for connecting vision to action - helping organizations move faster not by doing more, but by deciding better."

-Dr Edward Hoffman, former Chief Knowledge Officer at NASA

"The Decision Stack is the fastest way I know to create clarity where there's confusion. This is an essential book for anyone who wants their teams to make better decisions, faster."

-Petra Wille, Author of Strong Product People

"This book shows you how to build the kind of shared clarity that lets your entire organization move fast without falling apart."

-Des Traynor, Co-Founder of Intercom

"Teams fail when they lack shared context. The Decision Stack is the clearest framework I've seen for creating that context - from vision to the decisions your teams make every day."

-Pari Singh, CEO and Founder of Flow

"Martin's practical approach to connecting strategy, vision and goals is crucial to an aligned, empowered organization."

-Jeff Gothelf, co-founder Sense & Respond Learning

"There are a lot of books about strategy and a lot of books about execution. Very few show you how to connect the two. The Decision Stack fills that gap and shows how that connection enables teams to move faster without losing direction."

-Lenny Rachitsky, Founder of Lenny's Newsletter

"The Decision Stack offers a clear, practical framework for turning strategy into a shared mindset. This book helps leaders move beyond goal-setting to create real alignment around the

what, why, and how behind their decisions."

-Julia Austin, Harvard Business School & Author of After the Idea

"The Decision Stack is a definitive operating system for human alignment, but it is truly the 'missing manual' for the AI-native future - this will be the difference between a high-performing organization and an automated mess. A must-read for anyone building a future-proof organization."

-Grisha Pavlotsky, Chief Transformation Officer at Miro

"The Decision Stack brilliantly connects high-level strategy to day-to-day execution, offering concrete advice that cuts through the noise. This book is a must-read for navigating the inherent messiness of modern business."

-Stephanie Leue, Chief Product Officer at Ringier

"The Decision Stack makes a compelling case for fewer, better, and (most importantly) well-connected ways of defining vision, strategy, and objectives. Best of all, it doesn't ask you to redesign your org chart or start from scratch to get started."

-Matt LeMay, Author of Impact First Product Teams

"The Decision Stack takes the things we think we understand and forces them to actually connect. The result is clarity that feels obvious in hindsight, but is really hard to achieve in practice."

-John Cutler, Head of Product at Dotwork