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Decision Making

Decision Making >

Good Decision-making is vitally important to the success of our company. But making good decisions that incorporate all applicable objective facts, aren't clouded by biases, and take the diverse perspectives of multiple team members into account is hard. It's especially hard when you need to make decisions quickly while fostering a collaborative environment that's safe and respectful.

We are constantly learning how to make better decisions as a team and we haven't found the "secret sauce" yet - if it exists at all.

Here are some best practices and ideas we have learned along the way:

  • We don’t try to be right, we try to get it right. Knowing is less important than learning.
  • We don’t believe in right and wrong, black and white. There are many truths. There are some obvious wrongs and some obvious rights but the hard stuff sits in the ambiguous middle.
  • We try to make decisions based on data and evidence. But that requires sampling our prior probabilities on the hypothesis from a diverse group of people. Otherwise, we are prone to look for data that conforms our hypotheses. Remember, you can only ever disprove a theory.
  • Write it down: Writing clarifies the decision landscape and makes it easier to understand why and how a decision was made.
  • Rational decision-making is difficult. Beware of the biases we all have:
  • Rational decision-making is easier if you have a baseline understanding of probability theory and economics.