Making decisions is one of the most important things that we will do. Everyone in the organization will make decisions and should feel empowered to think for themselves. To be successful decision makers, we need a process.
When two people are discussing an issue, the need to be efficient is important. When a team is discussing an issue, the need to be efficient is paramount, because each inefficient minute is multiplied by the number of people in the discussion.
To have the most effective and efficient decision-making process, we must write up the issue, along with a desired solution, ahead of time. ****The goal of this write-up is to be thorough enough that at the time of decision-meeting, there are few or no questions. This can be achieved one of two ways:
Anyone who wants to bring up an issue that requires a decision should do so in writing. The write-up should include both a detailed description of the Issue as well as your Proposed Solution. I like the why-what-how framework. You may say “I don’t know the answer.” It doesn’t matter. You should take a guess. Even if you only have 10% confidence that your answer is the right one. And you should phrase the Proposed Solution in very bold, directive terms. (“Do this ….”) This may seem aggressive, but it creates a flag in the sand which generates a much more productive discussion and a quicker decision-time, which ultimately is the more important than appearing to be humble.
A decision is then made in the meeting. If consensus is not reached, an appointed decision-maker makes the call. If there are still open questions, then the decision-maker assigns one or more people to research, and of course write, the needed follow-up. At the end of the next meeting, the decision is made.
This method, though time-consuming for the sponsor, yields extraordinarily thoughtful decisions in a very short amount of time. The extra effort and work by one person creates a net savings in time and energy across the whole group.
A good time for all Issues/Proposed Solutions to be presented is at the weekly Team Meeting or a meeting specifically for that issue. When a solution is reached, it should be turned into an action with a DRI (Directly Responsible Individual) and Due Date.
A very common cause of inefficiency in startups is sloppy agreements. People don’t show up to meetings on time, and they don’t complete the goals that they declare (or they don’t declare goals at all). The result is a spreading virus of unproductiveness and decreasing morale.
The antidote for this is simple: Impeccable Agreements. These are 1) precisely defined, and 2) fully agreed to (which almost always means written) by all relevant people.
“Precisely defined” means that a successful follow-through of the agreement can be judged by an objective third party. For example, “We’ll start back up again after lunch” is not precisely defined. A participant could have lunch, take a two-hour walk, and then come back to the meeting and still have adhered to the “start after lunch” requirement. An Impeccable Agreement would be: “It is 12:04 pm now. We will start the meeting again at 1:00 pm. We all agree to be in our seats and present prior to 1:00 pm.” The agreement is now precisely defined, including calibration of time shown on each person’s device.
An Impeccable Agreement should be written down in Notion and accessible to all participants. The only exception is when the agreement is so small, or so regular, that all participants are sure not to forget what the exact agreement is.
In his 2015 Shareholder Letter, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos introduced us to light-weight, distributed decision-making. He wrote:
“Some decisions are consequential and irreversible or nearly irreversible – one-way doors – and these decisions must be made methodically, carefully, slowly, with great deliberation and consultation. If you walk through and don’t like what you see on the other side, you can’t get back to where you were before. We can call these Type 1 decisions. But most decisions aren’t like that – they are changeable, reversible – they’re two-way doors. If you’ve made a suboptimal Type 2 decision, you don’t have to live with the consequences for that long. You can reopen the door and go back through. Type 2 decisions can and should be made quickly by high judgment individuals or small groups.
As organizations get larger, there seems to be a tendency to use the heavy-weight Type 1 decision-making process on most decisions, including many Type 2 decisions. The end result of this is slowness, unthoughtful risk aversion, failure to experiment sufficiently, and consequently diminished invention. We’ll have to figure out how to fight that tendency.”
Let’s fight that tendency.