Decision making
This post is part 5 of the “Scale teams at breakneck speed — without breaking necks” blog series.
When a company is small, it is easy to reach consensus, carry out consultation of stakeholders, and for one person to get all of the necessary information to make a decision.
This changes as team sizes get bigger. To best manage this, it is a good idea to distribute authority and be specific about decision making processes.
Distribute authority
While it can be difficult to loosen the reins if you are used to being in control of every decision in your team, failing to do so will lead to you becoming a bottleneck. Better then to empower more junior employees to make decisions themselves even if you don’t always agree. Figuring out how to do this will also help clear up friction-generating fuzziness around roles and responsibilities — job descriptions tend to be overly general, providing a breeding ground for unhealthy office politics.
Be specific about decision making processes
In order to make sure that everyone is on the same page, it is important that there is a clear method for making decisions, especially when they are high profile.
Deciding on company/product names is an example of one such decision that is often highly contentious. Naming is emotive, so there is real danger of getting stuck in a loop of endlessly generating ideas in a misguided attempt to reach consensus. Better to commit to a process that everyone will respect, where stakeholders “disagree and commit” even if they are not fans of whatever the outcome may end up being. You won’t get perfection, but especially in fast moving companies, perfection doesn’t exist anyway.
To illustrate what such a process may look like, here is a basic outline:
1. Purpose
Select new company and product names
2. Measures and Constraints
must be in-line with company values
.com domains must be available
name must be no longer than 4 syllables
Decision maker not able to contribute own ideas to avoid self-preference.
…
3. Timeline
Week 1- 2: Company wide email to contribute/vote on ideas, review measures/constraints
Week 2–3: Marketing assistant review of submitted ideas, excluding those which are ineligible. Stakeholder panel votes on preferred ideas, generating shortlist of top 10 ideas
Week 3–4: Decision maker reviews shortlist. If happy with one of options, selects. Otherwise, requests additional round of suggestions from stakeholder panel.
Week 4–5: (If necessary) Stakeholder panel send new shortlist. Decision maker chooses best of options supplied.
4. Roles
Decision maker: B Baggins
Marketing assistant: G White
…
Unless measures and constraints are specified ahead of time, it is difficult to to keep them unbiased and data-informed. Without a timeline, the decision is unlikely to happen in a reasonable amount of time.
Being clear about roles and timelines is vital to make sure there is accountability for different stages in the process. Unless this is done it is easy for employees to become cynical and habituated to dysfunction.
Thanks for reading these articles! Please let me know if there is anything you would like further information on.
