Decisions, decisions. It gets harder as a company grows.
One of the things that gets harder as the company grows is the speed at which the company can make decisions. At some point, it’s not possible for you & the person responsible to come to a decision. You must grapple with the spectrum of reaching consensus vs deciding yourself.
The conflict is two fold while making decisions as you scale: (1) if *you* make it, you risk lack of support from the team & possibly move slower because people are reticent or (2) you require support from everyone but risk moving slowly if not everyone agrees w/ the direction.
To further exacerbate this problem: (1) you need to decide what % accuracy of data you need to make the decision, (2) is this a decision that needs to be decided quickly (urgent but room for error) vs thoughtfully (avoid irrevocable consequences)?, (3) who do you include?
To deal with this contention, some companies opt for & overuse the Amazon model: “Disagree & commit.” The truth is, if you use it too often, it becomes “Disagree & fume silently” beginning the descent towards a negative culture.
Another solution is to simply empower your team & impose a set of reviews to body check the decision. The risk here is that you put the team in review hell & require them to wait on you & your schedule creating a slower feedback loop. Often this disempowers the team.
The last common solution I’ll write about is to simply empower the team. This risks misaligned priorities & goals if the team doesn’t have the breadth about what’s going on in the business. It’s ideal if they knew all the details required to make the decision but not practical.
One approach I took to dealing with a part of the problem was the idea of reaching “reasonable consensus.” Meaning, you only need to convince 80% of the people in the room that the solution is close to correct.
Framing decisions as an experiment vs an absolute can help the dissenters overcome their fear or concerns. The decision can be rolled back once you have more information.
Some of the smartest people in the room will not be vocal. Their silence doesn’t mean agreement. It’s critical to find the right medium to seek their input. Making them conform to your comfort level of discourse does not inspire getting to the best decision.
Often, don’t be the person developing the solution. Instead, guide & contribute. A team must go through the same deep thought you did to reach a similar conclusion or it risks not being apparent to them during execution. The bonus is that it will be *their* plan to own.
The crisis of solving urgent problems can be dealt with by simply dialing up the frequency of discussion. If it’s important, it should consume a lot more of your time too. Be a member of the team not just their leader. Captains gotta row sometimes.
If you’re CEO & the team disagrees with you, just recognize they are willing to go toe-to-toe with you & bet their reputation (and possibly career) because they passionately believe in the solution. That’s worthy to take into account. Have an open mind to seek their truth.
Don’t use lack of data to further delay a decision that you happen to disagree with. Deal with the conflict head on. It’s okay to admit you’re not convinced & need time to think. The team may want your support!
It’s important to build a company that can bear making the wrong decisions. The fear is that you will lose w/o enough right decisions. That’s true. Too few & you die. However, you’ll also die if you build a company that must always make the right ones. Find a balance.
It’s better to nominate a Directly Responsible Individual (DRI) to help make the decision. You will incur less flak & politics about what people think drives *you* to the decision. The bonus is that more transparent concerns get routed to the DRI. Truth seeking gets easier.
If you require more meetings than you & others like to get to a decision you may have 1 of 2 problems generally: you (1) run a very inefficient meeting — analyze someone’s meeting who does it better, (2) may have a bigger problem with the team to overcome (eg lack of trust).
80% of the battle of making efficient decisions is setting a clear goal & target. Without that you leave much to debate about as folks lobby for different success criteria. This wastes a considerable amount of time.
Deal with loud & very talkative stakeholders 1:1 outside the meeting. Coach them to be succinct. Do not publicly out them for over-vocalizing. Often, they just care a lot but don’t realize they need give others air time. This will make decision making more efficient.
This was originally a Tweetstorm.
