5 things you need to know to make better decisions
The idea behind writing this article came after a long and exhausting period of inefficient discussions that were draining everybody’s energy and hurting the good mood in the office. Making decisions has never been a simple task because it involves choosing one thing over other possibilities. If you add to this scenario, people supporting different solutions, with different backgrounds, and working in a decentralized organization, then it gets even more complex to reach an outcome in a smooth way.
What happened to my team, was that after a long journey of emotional stress, we sat together to air our dirty laundry, in a very respectful way, with the intention of reviewing all the things that weren’t working well and trying to fix them. The day after, we started trying simple things that have been working wonderfully so far, at least the good mood is back again and we don’t get stuck every time a decision is needed. You might be wondering how to make better decisions with your team, right? Don’t worry, I’ll let the cat out of the bag so you don’t have to go through all this within your team.
1. Ask questions: you need to be on the same page

When it comes down to having an issue to discuss within the team, the very first thing each person involved should do is to widen its own frame. Asking for more information and making sure that the whole context is understood is the way to an open and honest conversation. It sounds like an obvious thing to do, but the truth is, that when people are passionate about something, they often tend to forget this. Try to remember the last time you engaged in a discussion, about a topic you really know about and have strong beliefs about. How was it? You probably had the context clear in your mind, and you forgot to check if the others were on the same page as you. And you probably tried to reach a conclusion according to your point of view, and not to a common one produced as a result of speaking and listening to others opinions.
If you have identified yourself in the previous situation in the past, don’t despair. Psychological studies shows it is a human tendency to not explore what’s under the apparent vision or knowledge and to focus on things that, for you, is conventional wisdom. This is common in many tech companies working in an agile environment, specially in self-managed organizations.
Daily, the teams need to discuss the best alternative for a product implementation, the solution for a back-end issue, the visual of the UI, or even the prioritization of the backlog. Without a clear decision making process, this can turn out to be an ego fight where no one listens to each other.
2. Find a host: don’t stray off the topic

Nobel Prize winner in economics Daniel Kahneman described that people tend to construct a decision based on things that are obvious and known. But there is a lot of not apparent information that should be considered when choosing between 2 or more proposals. In software development this is critical especially if you don’t consider why a feature is being developed. There are more things beyond the technical solution and the infrastructure. There’s the usability of it and the user experience, things that ultimately would make your feature not worthless or useless. Don’t worry, if even Steve Jobs and Bill Gates have failed making decisions on their products Apple Newton and Microsoft Spot, we, mere human beings, are also forgiven for failing when trying to get to a solution.
All of this can happen when we are not fully aware of what we don’t really know and we tend to construct stories out of what is really evident and that could be partial and biased by our own experiences.
The way my team found to keep wheels on the train during a heated discussion, is to define a host that will moderate the discussion of proposals. This person ensures that all members of the team have enough information and a “common context” on the subject under discussion.
3. Don’t wonder: do the Post-It Alignment

Asking questions and amplifying the context and knowledge on the focus of the discussion is the first step to get people on-board in a decision making. Another very important and obvious thing to do, that is often forgotten, is confirming the objective of the discussion: are people talking about the same thing?
One thing I noticed happening within my team was that many of the discussions we had were not simply because the team wasn’t aligned, but because people were talking about different things. For the ones looking from outside, it might appear like a crazy conversation where each person is so attached to defend their own idea, so that they can’t even listen to what the other is speaking about. And once this starts, it’s like a never ending vicious cycle and the discussions gets bigger and bigger.
To not go down this road, after making sure people know what will be discussed and why, we do the “post-it alignment”. There is no rocket science behind this technique, it basically consists of each person writing down in a post-it what he/she expects as an outcome of the discussion, placing it in a visible place and reading out loud. When the circle is done, someone summarizes the common outcome expected and uses it to keep the discussion focused on the shared objectives.
4. Keep it simple: it’s a team thing

Define a host, widen your context, do the post-it alignment, and you’ll have all you need for a productive and efficient round of discussion, right? Wrong. Another problem that arises whenever a decision is needed is the ego and wanting to be the smartest in the room. It’s inherent to humans to try to prove one’s ability and strength since the very beginning of all ages.
Since the very beginning, men have shown a need to prove themselves better than others. If this in the stone age meant to be the strongest and fastest during the hunt, these days means to be the one who has the last word in a discussion.
This is a bit harder to include as a step in a process to be followed in a company basis, because it’s up to each individual to decide whether to let go of vanity and being open to learn from others, and this requires being vulnerable. This should be an everyday personal effort in trying to be a better team member. So, if you cannot establish rules to make it work within the team, at least you can start by leading by example.
In this case, shift the focus from being right to getting it right, it’s not about you and your solution. Getting it right involves letting go of egos, feeling comfortable not knowing, allowing yourself to learn from the people that might have a different background or different role than yours. Concentrate on reaching the solution as a team and not as an individual. Giving space for others to speak is also important, because each one has different skills and values to contribute in different situations and will have the opportunity to add value in different ways. Again, it’s not about being the smartest in the room. It’s about sharing and caring about your team.
5. Make it visible and get people committing to it

Reading out loud and writing it in a visible place is the next step to make sure people agree on the decision and commit to it. Also, it helps the team to go back and review it in case it diverges from the agreed solution at any point.
Blackwood Seven has offices in 6 cities and sharing information between teams is key to keeping everybody aligned and working the same objective. That’s why we use different collaborative tools such as Trello, Confluence and Jira. Nonetheless, the teams located in the same office also likes to have documentation visible, so it’s easily accessible at any moment. In the Barcelona office, the walls of each team’s room are covered with prints of the UI, wireframes and flows to help guide the discussions and process of development — besides the glorious white board.
The review of the decision making process resulted in the creation of a special space in the room to allocate the final agreements that came out of the discussions. Once in a while we go to this space and read the agreements again to confirm we are on the same wavelength.
This strategy of dominating every single blank space in the wall has an extra benefit: it’s a good way to evaluate the results after a while. “Did we achieve the results for that decision?” If not, “is the failure related to not following the agreement, or should we try a different solution next time?” This helps to keep the focus on what we did and what went wrong, to reduce future mistakes.
Conclusion
Making decisions can be a tough process even when doing it alone, and this has been proven by studies in neuroscience, that shows how much it can be stressful to your brain if you force yourself to find the best solution every time. In his book, The Upward Spiral, neuroscientist Alex Korb advise people to make a ‘good enough’ decision instead of overwhelming your brain with too much emotion while looking for perfection:
”Trying for the best, instead of good enough, brings too much emotional ventromedial prefrontal activity into the decision-making process. In contrast, recognizing that good enough is good enough activates more dorsolateral prefrontal areas, which helps you feel more in control…”
So next time you engage in a discussion that aims for a decision, try to follow these easy tips I recommend in this article: ask questions to widen your context, find a host, do the post-it alignment to make sure people are on the same page, leave the egos out of the room, and go for the ‘good enough’ solution.
Whatever is the outcome of the discussion, don’t suffer. If it ends up not being a successful solution, it can be reviewed and changed. New approaches might arise from bad experiences and it’s much better trying and failing fast, than losing time because of a pointless discussion. Fail fast, fail often, but at least try.
