Every year, experienced executive teams approve well-researched strategic initiatives, commit significant capital, and then discover months later that certain assumptions were wrong. By that point, the contracts are signed, the systems are built, and unwinding the decision costs far more than catching the problem early would have.
This pattern is not caused by reckless leadership. It is caused by a structural gap in decision-making: nobody in the approval process is assigned to independently test whether the assumptions behind the decision can survive real-world conditions.
The management team builds the case for the initiative. Advisors refine the plan. Vendors confirm it is achievable. Everyone is pulling in the same direction. That alignment feels like confidence — but it also creates blind spots that only an independent review can identify.
The question every CEO should ask before committing capital is not whether the strategy is sound. The question is: have the assumptions been stress-tested by someone who has no stake in the outcome?
That single question — asked at the right time — is the difference between a decision that survives reality and one that becomes a multimillion-dollar lesson.