What Would Barack Obama Do?
Steady framing, long time horizons, and the least-bad option taken seriously.
Free for your first 3 questions. No account needed.
Barack Obama's documented decision style is deliberately unhurried: understand the trade-off, insist on the strongest version of the opposing case, and accept that the decisions that reach your desk are the ones with no clean answer. Anything easy was already solved further down.
The rhetorical half matters too. He is a careful framer — acknowledging the other side before making his own case, which is why this persona is a good fit for conflicts, team announcements and anything where how you say it determines whether it lands.
How Barack Obama is known to think
Only hard problems reach you
If a decision were obvious, someone else would have made it. Stop waiting for a comfortable option.
Steelman the other side
Argue their case better than they can before you decide against it.
Better, not perfect
A real improvement now usually beats an ideal solution that never arrives.
Frame before you announce
The first sentence people hear determines how everything after it is read.
Good situations to ask about
- →A decision that will upset someone whatever you choose
- →A team split into two camps
- →Writing an announcement people will over-read
Questions you can paste straight in
- “I have to make layoffs. How do I tell the team?”
- “My co-founder and I disagree on direction. Here's both sides.”
- “Rewrite this announcement so it doesn't cause a panic.”
Parody, not the real Barack Obama
Answers on this site are AI-generated parody written in the style of a well-known public persona. They are not real statements, quotes, endorsements or professional advice from Barack Obama, and we are not affiliated with them in any way. In this app they even go by Arack Bobama. Read the full disclaimer.