How Doritos made me think about Decision Making
Thursday, November 20, 2025
In the Fall, on Saturdays, you can usually find me planted on the couch with one or two (or five… who’s counting?) college football games on the TV. And like any true gameday ritual, every now and then I grab a bag of chips to snack on between plays.
So when the news broke that Doritos and Cheetos were changing the color dyes in some of their products, my game-day heart skipped a beat. At first, I was downright offended. Was my classic yellow-orange triangle about to look like a plain old tortilla chip? What would happen to that gloriously messy cheese dust that leaves my fingertips glowing like a construction cone? Would the flavor still tickle my taste buds the same way it has since childhood?
But once I stopped emotionally clutching my chip bag, the whole situation started to spark a bigger thought: this is exactly what decision-making looks like for entrepreneurs and business owners.
A company like PepsiCo doesn’t wake up one morning and decide to overhaul iconic products for fun. Decisions like this—especially ones tied to customer identity and brand nostalgia—go through a gauntlet of psychological reasoning, data interpretation, calculated risks and regulation stipulations. And honestly, isn’t that the same thing we all face when we’re steering our own businesses?
Prospect Theory: The Gain vs. Loss Game
When you peel back the emotion, many decisions begin with a simple question: What’s the gain, and what’s the loss?
Prospect Theory tells us that people feel losses more intensely than equivalent gains. So while PepsiCo might gain health-conscious customers by removing synthetic dyes, they also risk the perceived “loss” of flavor, color, and brand identity among loyal fans.
Entrepreneurs face this all the time. Raise prices? Launch a new product? Remove a feature? Each choice brings opportunity—and potential backlash. Our brains are wired to fear the loss more than we appreciate the gain.
Heuristics & Biases: When Our Brains Trick Us
And then there’s the tricky part: our brains don’t always make rational decisions. We rely on shortcuts—heuristics—that can cloud our judgment. Anchoring on past data, letting recent incidents feel bigger than they are, or falling into the trap of “this is how we’ve always done it.”
Take Netflix. I still remember the days of ordering DVDs through the mail, waiting a few days for the red envelope, and feeling like I was living in the future. Today, if my movie buffers for longer than 30 seconds, I’m impatiently looking for someone to blame.
Netflix made a decision that seemed outrageous at the time—ditching the DVD-by-mail identity that built their business and pivoting to streaming. That decision could have tanked the company. Instead, it reinvented how the entire world consumes entertainment.
Bounded Rationality: No One Has All the Answers
Another piece of the puzzle: we don’t make decisions with infinite time, perfect information, or omniscient wisdom. Most of us are making “good enough” choices with the resources we have at the moment.
And if companies aren’t careful, they can slide into the same situation Kodak found itself in—choosing not to pivot because protecting the old feels safer than chasing the new. Kodak literally invented the digital camera… and chose to ignore it. The rest is history.
Courageous Decisions Make the Difference
Peter Drucker said it best: “Whenever you see a successful business, someone once made a courageous decision.”
Look at Apple’s “home run” moment in 2007 with the iPhone. It wasn’t just a new product—it was a complete reimagining of what a phone could be. Bold, integrated, beautifully designed. And it didn’t just open a new market. It created one.
A Practical Model You Can Actually Use
If you want to understand or improve your own decision-making, the Rational (Structured) Decision-Making Model is a simple, powerful framework:
1. Define the Problem / Objective
State exactly what you’re trying to solve or achieve.
Why: You can’t hit a target you haven’t named.
2. Gather Relevant Information & Stakeholders
Look at hard data, customer feedback, legal constraints, and market signals.
Why: Decisions fail when made in isolation.
3. Generate Alternatives / Options
More choices = better thinking.
Why: It prevents tunnel vision and “only one way” thinking.
4. Evaluate Alternatives Against Clear Criteria
Rank them using cost, risk, brand impact, timing, and feasibility.
Why: It forces reality into the process.
5. Make the Decision & Assign Accountability
Every choice needs an owner, a timeline, and a metric.
Why: Ambiguity is the enemy of execution.
6. Implement Through Testing or Pilots
Start small, observe in real conditions, and adjust.
Why: A small failure teaches big lessons.
7. Monitor, Learn & Iterate
Track KPIs, listen to consumers, and refine.
Why: The best decisions evolve as the world changes.
And that brings us right back to our bag of chips.
Whether it’s PepsiCo removing synthetic dyes, Netflix pivoting to streaming, or Apple redefining communication, every corporate decision—big or small—comes down to courage, clarity, and a commitment to learning. The companies that win aren’t the ones that make perfect choices. They’re the ones that build a system for making consistently better ones.
When leaders embrace data, understand the psychology behind how people think, and stay humble enough to learn from every outcome, they not only create better products…
They create stronger, more resilient businesses ready for whatever comes next.
Hi,
CEO Of Home Plate Rewards
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