<aside> 💡 Why: autonomous decision-making is at the core of our liberated company, but it doesn’t mean chaos. On the contrary.

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Our decision process has 4 basic components:

• consulting others - facts and options
• knowing how much it costs - risks and benefits
• anticipating results - check
• communicating

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/c-vFPvOOaWhJyUR9sAvE9ZilZvZoPbd_ah_DoLC21pz_8kKw1dWjg6ZPS_LLMi7G81zVjXKQvYVCd4K7qobs__dCIIuPGBp-PFuqLf8wWrbIxknogJy5jw8_YMtWJ-CK4Sf2tFLQ

On top of that schematics, some nuances of grey will be needed, the bigger the decision is:

• the more people you want to consult and inform, from zero to everyone.
• the sooner you want to consult people e.g. don’t consult the CEO at the end on a project he might have a strong opinion on.
• the more experienced you should be e.g. it wouldn’t be fair to recruit someone if you’re an intern.

Examples:

• bigger decisions: hiring someone, changing the business model, investing in a 3 days/15k€ event, etc.
• smaller decisions: stuff that costs less than 1k€, updating how-to, etc.

Fast decisions

It's not helping when decisions seem to be carried on from one meeting to the next. Often more than not you can still consult people without calling out long decisions. Here are some alternatives:

• Give 1-2 person you wanted to consult a quick call.
• Post what you have in mind and get people to react. Call them if you uncover resistance, move on if everyone's happy!
• Use Alignement Records.

Once the decision is made

• Measure, especially if you go against the tide, make sure you:
  1. use all of the knowledge available
  2. explain to the team how you are going to measure the success of the decision
  3. measure the success and be realistic about it.
• Inform relevant people of your decision, again ranging from none to everyone.
• For consulted people, it’s useful to disagree in the early stage of decision-making but once a decision has been made, we should all commit to it.

<aside> 💡 Disagree and commit is a management principle which states that individuals are allowed to disagree while a decision is being made, but that once a decision has been made, everybody must commit to it. The principle can also be understood as a statement about when it is useful to have conflict and disagreement, with the principle saying disagreement is useful in early states of decision-making while harmful after a decision has been made. Disagree and commit is a method of avoiding the consensus trap, in which the lack of consensus leads to inaction.

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