Stop-Doing Decision Assessment for Managers and Team LeadsAnybody can add. The job is deciding what goes.
Sixteen forced choices about what you would stop first and keep longest, with three tendencies reported only where they actually show.
Managers are measured on what they start. Nothing in this market measures what they end.
Every overloaded team is overloaded for the same reason. Things were added and nothing was taken away, and the work that should have stopped is still running because stopping needs more agreement than starting ever did. Yet there is no instrument for it: the whole category measures prioritisation, delegation and what somebody would begin, and not one measures subtraction.
Sixteen forced choices put four live commitments in front of you under a stated constraint and ask which you would stop first and which you would keep going longest. Nothing can be protected without something else being given up, which is what makes a forced choice much harder to fake than a rating scale about your own decisiveness.
Every block contains the same four surfaces wearing different clothes. Something everybody sees. Something nobody sees. The newest thing on the list. And the longest-running thing on it. What the sitting measures is whether the surface decides your answer or the reason does — and it is built so the surface cannot. The oldest item is the right cut on half the blocks and load-bearing on the rest. The newest is the right cut on four of them and the one thing worth protecting on four more. There is no kind of work you can always reach for, and the report prints what you reached for beside what the key does.
Three tendencies come out of it and each is reported ONE-TAILED, which means something specific: below its threshold nothing is reported at all — not a low score, not a reassurance, nothing. Above it the reading is a described behaviour under a named condition, printed beside the strength it comes from, because that is where it comes from. Cutting the work nobody sees, which is never the right first stop on any of the sixteen. Cutting the newest thing past the four blocks where it is genuinely finished. And ending something without saying so. None of them is a percentile and none of them is a label.
Twenty-four further exercises cover how you stop something — which depends on whose commitment it is and how long the crunch lasts — what goes into the message when something people relied on ends, and how to tell work whose reason has expired from work that is merely old.
What you walk away with
Keyed accuracy across thirty-two poles, corrected against what a typical manager would match, drawn as a band rather than a point.
What you reached for first and kept longest across the four kinds of work, printed beside what the key does, so the comparison is against an answer rather than against nothing.
Reported only above their threshold, as a described behaviour under a named condition, and paired with the strength each of them comes from.
Choosing, stopping, telling and spotting the expired — each with what it gets you and what it costs when it runs unchecked.
What you stopped first, what you kept longest, and whether each pole matched the key. Footnotes, not a hover.
Chosen from the tendency that actually showed, naming a specific situation and a specific behaviour.
Inside your report
Illustrative sample — your report is generated from your own responses.
| Kind of work | You stop first | Key stops first |
|---|---|---|
| Long-running, its reason gone | 6 | 11 |
| Seen by everybody, worth little | 4 | 1 |
| The newest thing, unpaid for | 5 | 0 |
| Unnoticed until it is missing | 1 | 0 |
Every block offers all four kinds. The comparison is between your habit and the keyed answer rather than between your habit and nothing.
Below its threshold a tendency is not reported as a low score. It is not reported at all, and the report says so rather than reassuring you.
Nothing can be protected without something else being given up, which is what makes a forced choice harder to fake than a rating scale.
Built for
- Managers whose team list has grown for a year without anything leaving it
- Team leads about to lose capacity and having to choose what gives
- Senior individual contributors carrying four things and being offered a fifth
- Anybody who has quietly let something lapse and been found out later
Sixteen lists, one thing has to go each time
40 exercises across four formats · about 35 minutes · a subtraction figure with both spans, the four kinds of work you reach for, and three tendencies reported only where they show.
₹799 (incl. GST) · assessment and full report, nothing further to pay
Frequently asked questions
Because subtraction is a trade by definition. On a rating scale everything can be important; in a forced choice nothing can be protected without something else being given up, and that makes the format markedly harder to fake than a self-rating about decisiveness.
That three of the readings only matter at one end. Below its threshold a tendency is not reported as a low score — it is not reported at all, and the page says so. Above it you get a described behaviour under a named condition, bounded and paired with the strength it comes from, never a percentile and never a type.
On these sixteen blocks, yes, and the report prints it. Each block carries a defensible cheapest stop and a defensible thing that has to survive, keyed on the reason for the work rather than on how visible, how new or how old it is. The rationale for all four options on every block is in the report.
No. The longest-running item is the right cut on eight of the sixteen blocks and load-bearing on the other eight, and the keyed first stop is also spread evenly across the four presented positions. On four blocks the right cut is the most visible item and on four it is the newest, because the situation makes it so.
About thirty-five minutes for forty exercises. ₹799 in India, inclusive of GST, or US$7.99 elsewhere, one-time, for the sitting and the full report.
Each one takes a single capability, puts you inside the situations where it is actually tested, and scores your choices against published evidence — with a report designed for that capability alone, not a template. They span hiring, compliance, education, operations and personal skill.
Browse the catalogue →Methodology: Forty original exercises across four formats: sixteen forced-choice blocks asking what would be stopped first and kept longest, nine situational-judgment items on how something is stopped, eight select-every-that-applies items on ending work well, and seven true or false claims. Construct statement: it measures what somebody removes when capacity is short - whether the thing they stop first is chosen by the reason for the work rather than by how visible, how new or how old it is, and whether they end a commitment in a way the people who depended on it can act on. It does not measure how hard somebody works, how much they can carry, their ability to prioritise incoming work, their delegation, or their fitness for any particular role. Declared response instruction: behavioural tendency throughout - what you would most likely stop, not what ought to be stopped. Scoring: a ONE-TAILED RISK SCALE. The headline is the keyed accuracy of the forced choices, chance-corrected against an authored prior on every option rather than against a coin, so zero means no better than a respondent choosing the way people typically choose. The two poles carry SEPARATE nulls: the protect-pole prior is authored separately from the stop-first prior, because the option almost nobody would stop first is exactly the option most people would protect, and scoring the second pole against the first pole's prior would flatter every respondent. Alongside it and never folded into it, three tendencies are scored one-tailed: each is reported only above a stated threshold, as a described behaviour under a named condition, bounded and always paired with the situation that triggers it. Nothing is reported as a percentile and nothing is reported as a type. Each block offers all four kinds of work; the keyed first stop is spread evenly across the four presented positions and across the kinds themselves - the longest-running item is the right cut on eight of the sixteen, the most visible on four and the newest on four - so neither a fixed position nor a fixed kind of work pays. An unanswered block leaves both sides of the ratio rather than scoring zero. Reliability is reported as McDonald's omega rather than alpha and stated as an assumption until observed data replaces it; any part too short to carry a number receives a three-way placement with the arithmetic printed. Construct grounding, drawn across sources rather than from one framework: the sunk-cost effect and escalation of commitment to a failing course of action (Arkes and Blumer, 1985; Staw, 1976; Sleesman et al., 2012 meta-analysis); subtraction neglect, the finding that people systematically overlook removal as a way of improving a system (Adams, Converse, Hales and Klotz, Nature, 2021); the status quo bias and the endowment effect as they apply to existing commitments (Samuelson and Zeckhauser, 1988; Kahneman, Knetsch and Thaler, 1991); work-in-progress limits and the queueing result that utilisation near capacity multiplies delay (Little, 1961; Reinertsen, The Principles of Product Development Flow, 2009); the maintenance and reliability literature on controls whose value is only visible on failure (Reason, Managing the Risks of Organizational Accidents, 1997); the exploration-exploitation trade-off and why the new bet is the first thing cut (March, 1991); goal-setting research on the cost of holding many active goals at once (Locke and Latham, 2002); one-tailed risk reporting as a bounded, conditional and situation-paired statement rather than a percentile; forced-choice formats and their resistance to faking relative to single-stimulus ratings (Cao and Drasgow, 2019); McDonald's omega in place of alpha (McDonald, 1999); and the standard error of measurement as the reason a band rather than a point is reported (AERA, APA and NCME Standards, 2014). All items are original works. No item, scale name or report section is taken from any commercial instrument, and no affiliation with or endorsement by any vendor is claimed or implied.