6 min read · 1,140 words
At a glance
- The Six Traps rarely run solo. They stack in predictable pairs around the same decision, and the stacks compound: each trap manufactures exactly the evidence the next one needs.
- The inventory is six live-tests, one per trap, each answerable in one line from numbers you already have. It takes about twenty minutes.
- Scoring is blunt. Zero or one live trap is normal operations. Two stacked traps is drift. Three or more is a stalled portco pattern.
The inventory takes six lines and about twenty minutes, and most operators who run it find at least two live traps on the first pass. That matters because the Six Traps almost never operate alone. Any single trap is survivable; companies carry one live trap through good quarters all the time. The damage comes from the stacks: two or three traps reinforcing each other around the same decision, each one making the others harder to see and the decision harder to put on a date.
The traps are structural patterns in cognition, not founder failures. They show up in disciplined teams with clean books, which is exactly why they need an inventory rather than an intuition.
Why do the traps stack?
Because each trap produces the conditions the next trap feeds on. Three stacks show up so often in our diagnostic work that we treat them as defaults to check first.
Sunk Cost plus Loss Aversion, on the product line nobody will kill. Sunk cost keeps the line alive: $2.1M of engineering already went in, and the money already spent feels like it gets a vote. It does not. Loss aversion then keeps the conversation from starting at all, because the pain of admitting the loss runs roughly twice the value of recovering the capital. Stacked, the two traps produce a line that everyone privately knows is dead and that survives every planning cycle anyway.
Anchoring plus Certainty Illusion, on the plan that orbits last round’s number. The first number set becomes the number the conversation orbits, so the plan still triangulates back to the valuation story from the raise, two market-years later. Certainty illusion then dresses that plan in polished reporting: clean dashboards, confident decks, a model with twelve tabs. The polish feels like evidence. It is theater, and it protects the anchor from ever being questioned.
Status Quo plus Mental Accounting, on the budget that rolls forward untouched. Doing nothing feels neutral, so the allocation rolls forward intact from a context that no longer exists. Mental accounting hides the cost: the total is on plan, so nobody asks whether the mix inside the total still matches the company. The right total hides the wrong allocation, quarter after quarter, and the budget review keeps passing.
How do you run the inventory?
Six traps, one live-test each. Every test has the same shape: name something specific, in one line, from numbers you already have. If you can name it immediately, the trap is live. If you reach for a paragraph instead of a name, the trap is probably live and defended.
- Sunk Cost. The money already spent feels like it is voting; it is not. Live-test: name the line item you defend by what it already cost rather than what it returns next quarter.
- Status Quo. Doing nothing feels neutral; it is never neutral. Live-test: name the decision that has moved to “next quarter” in more than two consecutive planning cycles.
- Mental Accounting. The right total can hide the wrong allocation. Live-test: name a budget that is on plan in total while you could not defend its two largest lines one at a time.
- Anchoring. The first number set becomes the number the conversation orbits. Live-test: name the number in the current plan that is there because it was in the last plan, not because the math still produces it.
- Loss Aversion. The pain of admitting the loss is roughly twice the value of recovering the capital. Live-test: name the write-down you have already accepted privately but have not yet said out loud at a board meeting.
- Certainty Illusion. Polished reporting can feel like evidence when it is actually theater. Live-test: name the metric in your board deck that has not changed a single decision in the last two quarters.
Run all six even if the first two come up clean. The stacks hide in the back half of the list, because the later traps are the ones that disguise the earlier ones.
How do you score it?
Zero or one live trap is normal operations. Every company carries some bias load; one live trap with a named owner and a date is a Tuesday, not a diagnosis.
Two stacked traps (two live traps pointing at the same decision or the same line item) is drift. This is the stage where the metrics can still look fine, which is exactly the problem: blended ratios are the certainty illusion’s favorite costume, and the dashboard keeps reporting health while the decision ages. We covered that failure mode in The ratio mirage.
Three or more live traps is a stalled portco pattern, the profile investors privately call the walking dead. At three traps the company is not making one bad call; it is running a decision process that can no longer produce calls at all. The full anatomy of that state is in Inside the stalled portco.
Two things to hold onto when the score comes back high. First, the score maps decisions, not character. The decisions weren’t wrong. They were right for a context that no longer exists. Second, the score is an instruction, not a verdict: pick the stack with the most dollars behind it, name the forward decision it is blocking, and put that decision on a date inside the next 30 days. The inventory exists to point at the next call, not to grade the last one.
What is the Decisive Finance role in this?
The inventory above is the self-serve edition of the Six Trap Diagnostic™, the first instrument we run inside the 14-day Decision Diagnostic. We score all six traps against the actual financials rather than the live-test answers, map each stack to the decision it is blocking, and put the recoverable value in dollars next to every one. Guaranteed 3x your Diagnostic fee in recoverable value, in 14 days. Typical 5x to 10x. We don’t audit the past. We justify each next call.
Where to go from here
If the inventory surfaced two or more live traps pointing at the same decision, that decision is the starting point, and this quarter is the time.
Read the guarantee Book the call
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