Decision making
- Do not defer decisions; we will never have perfect information so we should make decisions and revisit them once the information has changed. Switching context when deferring decisions is costly
- Do not make decisions through democracy. At times, decisions require intuition and at other times it requires data. We should talk through decisions and consult others for their expertise, but ultimately one person should own the decision and communicate the outcome to all stakeholders. Don’t diffuse the responsibility. Closing the loop is vital to the success of the decision (and the team)
- Scenario planning is part of decision making – you can never make a good decision without anticipating an outcome, nor can you make a good decision under duress. Irreversible decisions are more important to scenario plan for. Reversible decisions are almost never high stakes (refer to point 1) and should be delegated to discrete owners to drive to an outcome (refer to point 2)
- [Each decision should s]tart out with what is “right” rather than what is acceptable precisely because a compromise is always necessary in the end (HBS: The Effective Decision)