Decision-making that optimizes collaboration through autonomy
Establish a culture of impactful decision-making on your team
Your team is at an impasse - users have been clamoring for the same feature, and you know you’ve got to make space for it on the roadmap. But, as is always the way with roadmaps and backlogs, there are a couple of ways to cut this carrot, and opinions are flying.
To move forward productively, your team needs to weigh out options, feel heard on known tradeoffs, and make the decision quickly so as not to lose momentum.
At this point, it can feel like the most efficient way to move forward is for you to make a call, and run towards a solution. I’ve been there. I have too often found myself saying (or thinking): “Let’s just go with that! We can’t lose more time on this!” in a meeting. This is a red flag. The way the decision is made will dictate the implications.
It’s vital for teams to value thoughtful decision-making, using it as a tool to move fast while moving deliberately and collaboratively. And thoughtful doesn’t need to mean slow. Generalists, operating as internal product managers, are highly communicative about their own decisions, but perhaps even more importantly, are skilled in accelerating the decision-making within the teams they work with, without the need to make decisions unilaterally.
how DO you move fast while making thoughtful decisions?
The principle driving skilled decision-making is empowering collaboration through autonomy
Why This Works
You don’t want your team to lose time in a Spider-man point, where each person thinks someone else is responsible for a decision.
Moreover, you want teams to feel motivated by their contributions. Being clear on our roles and responsibilities is critical for psychological safety and empowerment. Having clarity on which decisions we own, and which decisions we don’t, reminds us of our importance to the broader organization, and how we make an impact.
Why Do This Now
Sometimes, teams think they are too small for decision-making frameworks and tools. Other times, they might think that taking the time to cross t’s and dot i’s will take too much time, the time they don’t have in the scrappy startup life. But in the absence of structure, there are several risks:
The context and tradeoffs around a decision are lost from the library of institutional knowledge. As time goes on, teammates will start to ask “Why did we do that, again?” without knowing where to look for answers. Worse, they may repeat mistakes or waste time pursuing options that had been previously ruled out.
Culturally, teammates may begin to languish, feeling they don’t have any authority or autonomy to make decisions or have any visibility into how decisions are made. They will say things like, “Who knows how we make decisions here”. They will wait for someone else to move things forward, and feel disengaged from the problems of the business.
how We Do: Clearly define decision-makers and collaborators, document tradeoffs, and share widely
Rules (Process) 📝
Ensure a timeline: Decisions need to be made, and some of them need to be made ASAP. For any decision, make sure to document when any decision is made. For an upcoming decision, assign it a due date to proactively answer “When will we know?” and prioritize urgency.
Ensure accountability: Ownership of a decision should be known, widely visible, and transparent. If a decision is being made just because a customer asked for it and the founder wants to maintain the relationship, that should be acknowledged and shared. If an IC will need a manager’s approval for a decision, then that manager is the approver. This is vital for driving autonomy and empowerment on a team, as well as a tool to make sure that a decision is made quickly.
Ensure visibility: Decisions should be made in the open. This means they should be written down - with the owner, progress, and timeline clearly outlined - and organized so the team knows where to find them.
DACIs are awesome at providing a format for decision-making that weighs the pros and cons and allows the opportunity to engage large groups. They outline a Driver, who is pushing forward the decision-making, an Approver, who will ultimately make the decision, Contributors, who will help synthesize options, and Informed team members, who are “cc-ed” on a decision as an FYI. Laying out options with pros and cons underneath those stakeholders helps to get everyone involved. However, these can feel heavy for smaller decisions or organizations.
Some pitfalls of decision-making frameworks and what to do about them:
Autonomy gives way to blaming: releasing the responsibility of decision-making can be difficult, and in the absence of information, you or your team might start to think decisions just aren’t being made. This might lead to nagging, degradation of mutual trust, and in the end, hurried, knee-jerk decisions.
Suggestion: As the driver of a decision, document early and often any progress made, in a public place. Don’t worry if the updates aren’t substantive – think of it as what you would say if someone pinged you for an update. Presenting that update consistently and proactively will help build trust.
Suggestion: Make deadlines for decisions very public. If needed, set aside time to update your working group regularly on the status of any open decisions, any new decisions, and their relative priorities.
Decisions start dragging: feeling intimidated by a long set of sections to complete, decision-making can fall to the bottom of your to-do list. What’s worse: the decision gets made, but it isn't documented, because it feels like too much of an impediment to progress to stop and write it down.
Suggestion: Drop the template when it feels like a burden. So long as you document the when, who, and what of what was decided, that’s totally sufficient.
Suggestion: On the other hand, if you see decisions not being made at all, reconsider if they need to be. If they do, assign them a due date, and keep it light.
Bikeshedding: The DACI just had its 6th option documented. Collaborators need another week to research an option. You get the sense the team is starting to boil the ocean.
Suggestion: Limit the number of options weighed. Tell collaborators: “Let’s choose between 3 options to make this a bit easier to manage; what should we eliminate here, as decisions that aren’t really in the running?”
Suggestion: Sometimes this behavior is happening because teammates are nervous about the impact of a decision. Indicate the expected impact of the decision on your document. Note for each option if it is a decision that could be easily overridden or not (i.e. if it is a one-way or two-way door).
Collaborating becomes decision-by-committee: Something kind of awesome has happened and your whole team is weighing in. People you had no idea would feel so passionate about this decision are leaving comments. But now you, as the decision maker (or the decision accelerator), are worried about ensuring everyone’s input is integrated into the final decision.
Suggestion: Leave comments unresolved or document them as they are. They are part of the historical record, and doubts/questions/concerns should be remembered even if they aren’t addressed.
Suggestion: Employ ELMO for the sake of velocity. Respond to comments and say, “I think we’re going to move forward and make a decision without addressing this point as the decision is pressing, but will be leaving this comment here for future reference”. This might present a helpful moment for escalation.
People 🫶
Amplify decisions: The best way to motivate people to engage with a process is to celebrate it as it is happening and show the team where it is happening. When you see the voices of decision makers and collaborators getting lost in document comments, link the document in Slack or email to increase reach. Broadcast and congratulate decisions publicly and engage in the commentary yourself to get the flywheel of communication going.
Optimize for async collaboration: Writing things up allows space for thoughtful decision-making. Sharing out a document will give the team a way to process the information, and help reduce the emotions in a decision.
Empower the decision maker and the decision accelerator: Ensure the responsible person feels prepared to make the decision and allow them to have a clear path to escalate if they are unsure. Oftentimes, a decision will impact many areas of the organization and will need to be escalated to a founder or another discipline to make the best decision for the company. Encouraging autonomy doesn’t just mean leaving a person alone to figure something out; they should have all of the resources they need, and they, too, believe they should be responsible for the final decision.
Tools 🛠️
Document, document, document: The best strategy is to make whatever you already use today to document (Notion, Confluence, Google Docs) also the home for your historical record of decisions made. This helps ensure that decisions are made out in the open, not gate-kept in a new tool.
Make it engaging: Of course, not every team is living in documentation and leaving comments actively. Tools like Hoop make decision-making more interactive and engaging for your team. The important thing is to make sure you keep a record of all decisions so that your team can access them!
AI can be a powerful tool: In the most lightweight sense, you may want to use chatGPT to quickly weigh out pricing and timing concerns, and any publicly available information that might contribute to a decision. Parrot.ai gives you insight into decisions made quickly in conversation, that can be easily captured in documentation. Other tools focus specifically on how to use AI to power decision-making, like Rationale.
Actually Actionable
Nice article. Now what?
We’ve taken the ideas above and created an action plan for you and your team.
Establish templates for decisions big and small: Introduce a company-wide template and decision log. Create the template to get it launched. Having trouble engaging the team? Stay flexible with the format, type up the first draft of DACIs, and hand it off while the team finds its groove (2 Hours).
If you hear a decision being made, write it down: Behave as the decision-documenter in your company until it becomes common practice to start documenting. Empower and encourage your team to do the same. Lead by example (Ongoing).
Regular check-ins: Once a week ask the team, “Have any decisions been made this week that we all should know about?” Then, write them down! If no decisions have been made for a few weeks, it might be worth checking with your team (1 Hour Weekly):
That you have a shared definition of what constitutes a decision big enough to be written down and;
Any blockers the team might be facing that are slowing down decision-making.
Cross-post decisions that have been made in multiple channels, all linking back to the documentation of that decision (1 Hour Weekly).
Before you go
A common hesitation around implementing a decision-making framework is the fear that it’ll take too much time, be too heavy-handed, and slow down the building process. But having a written record of decisions and cross-functional clarity on progress is critical to a thriving team because it empowers autonomy by removing silos.
Small changes make an immediate impact and continue paying the benefits forward. Having a written record will help teams collaborate asynchronously and move faster in the moment while providing a historical record for new decisions (and new hires!) down the line. The cultural benefits of seeing others empowered with decisions will also encourage action from team members and make them excited about the role they play on the team.
Any other suggestions for formats or techniques to collaboratively and efficiently enhance decision-making on your team? We’d love to hear about them!
Writer: Sophia
Interested in working with Sophia through of All Trades to transform your product operations? Email founder@weofalltrades.com for more on how to bring her in as an embedded operator in your startup.
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