I saw this fascinating post last week about decision making and context.
In L&D we make all three types of decisions, but too often we treat EVERY choice as a tattoo. Buying a new platform, rolling out a leadership programme, changing your evaluation model. None of these are truly permanent. But we still debate them endlessly, afraid to commit.
More often they’re hats or haircuts. A pilot project, a short experiment, a new approach to measurement – if it doesn’t fit, you can take it off or grow it out. The cost of getting it wrong is small compared to the cost of doing nothing.
The real tattoos in learning are rarer. They’re the structural ones: tying your strategy to compliance alone, embedding a legacy LMS across the whole organisation, outsourcing your core capability. They mark you for years. Those are the ones to pause over.
It stops you overthinking the hats and underplaying the tattoos.
Maybe the useful question isn’t “what decision are we making?” but “is this a hat, a haircut, or a tattoo?”
Lost and Desperate 
[…] My third most read post discussed how we often spend too much time debating low-risk decisions while allowing high-impact ones to pass by due to habit or convenience. Framing choices, such as hats, haircuts, or tattoos, helps people judge reversibility and consequences quickly. It gives permission to experiment, but at the same time, it sharpens attention to the decisions that really matter. Structural choices like compliance-driven strategy, platform lock-in, or outsourcing essential functions shape behaviour for years. Those are the tattoos. The post resonates because it helps leaders stop overthinking the small stuff and take more care with what truly sticks. […]
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