if you make the wrong decision if it's a two-way door decision you walk out the door you pick a door you walk out you spend a little time there it turns out to be the wrong decision you can come back in and pick another door some decisions are so consequential and so important and so hard to reverse that they really are one way door decisions you go in that door you're not coming back and those decisions have to be made very deliberately very carefully um if you can think of yet another way to analyze the decision you should slow down and do that so you know uh when I CEO of Amazon I often found myself in the position of being the chief slowdown officer because somebody would be bringing me a one-way door decision and I would say okay I can think of three more ways to analyze that so let's go do that because we H we are not going to be able to reverse this one easily maybe you can reverse it it's going to be very costly and very time consuming we really have to get this one right from the beginning and uh what happens unfortunately in companies what can happen is that you have a oniz fits-all decisionmaking process where you end up using the heavyweight process on all decisions including the lightweight ones the two-way door decisions two-way door decisions should mostly be made by single individuals or by very small teams deep in the organization MH and oneway door decisions are the ones that that are the irreversible ones those are the ones that should be elevated up to you know the senior most Executives who should slow them down and make sure that the right thing is being done yeah I mean part of the skill here is to to know the difference between one way and two-way I think you me yes yeah I mean I think you mentioned Amazon Prime the decision to sort of create Amazon Prime as a one-way door and I mean it's not it's unclear if it is or not but it probably is and it's a really big risk to go there there are a bunch of decisions like that that are you know changing the decision is going to be very very complicated some of them are technical decisions too because some technical decisions are like quick drying cement you know if you're going to once you make them it gets really hard I mean you know choosing which propellants to use in a vehicle you know selecting LNG for the booster stage and selecting hydrogen for the upper stage that has turned out to be a very good decision but if you changed your mind that would be a very that would be a very big setback do you see what I'm saying so that's the kind of decision you scrutinize very very carefully other things just aren't like that most decisions are not that way most decisions should be made by single individ indviduals but they need and and and done quickly in the full understanding that you can always change your mind yeah one of the things I really liked perhaps this is not two-way door decisions is uh I disagree and commit phrase so don't so somebody brings up an idea to you if it's a two-way door you state that you don't understand enough to agree but you still back them I'd love to explain it yeah disagree and commit is a really important principle that saves a lot of arguing yeah so you know I'm going to use that in my personal life I disagree but commit like it's very common in any Endeavor in life in business and any you know anybody where you have teammates you have a teammate and the two of you disagree yeah at some point you have to make a decision and you know in companies we tend to organize hierarchically so there's this you know whoever's the more senior person ultimately gets to make the decision so ultimately the CEO gets to make that decision and the CEO may not always make the decision that they agree with so like you know I would I would often I would be the one who would disagree and commit some one of my direct reports would very much want to do it do something in a particular way I would think it was a bad idea I would explain my point of view they would say I Jeff I think you're wrong and here's why and we would go back and forth and I would often say you know what I don't think you're right um but I'm going to gamble with you and um you're closer to the ground truth than I am I've known you for 20 years you have great judgment I don't know that I'm right either not really not for sure all these decisions are complicated let's do it your way but at least then you've made a decision and and I'm agreeing to commit to that decision so I'm not going to be second guessing it I'm not going to be sniping at it I'm not going to be saying I told you so I'm going to try actively to help make sure it works that's a really important teammate Behavior there's so many ways that dispute resolution is a really interesting thing in on teams and there are so many ways when two people disagree about something even the I'm assuming on the case where everybody's well intentioned they just have a very different op opinion about what the right decision is and we have in our society and inside companies we have a bunch of um mechanisms that we use to resolve these kinds of disputes a lot of them are I think really bad so an example of a really bad way of coming to agreement is compromise so compromise you know I here's we're in a room here and I could say Lex how tall do you think this feeling is and you'd be like I don't know Jeff maybe 12T tall and I would say I I think it's 11t tall and then um we'd say you know what let's just call it 11 and a half feet that's compromised instead of the right thing to do is you know to get a tape measure or figure out some way of actually measuring but think get in that tape measure and figure out how to get it to the top of the ceiling and all these things that requires energy compromise the advantage of compromise as a resolution mechanism is that it's low energy um but it doesn't lead to truth and so uh in things like the height of the ceiling where truth is a knowable thing you shouldn't allow compromise to be used when you can know the truth MH um another really bad resolution mechanism that happens all the time is just who's more stubborn yeah this is also have let's say two Executives who disagree and they just have a war of attrition and whichever one gets exhausted first capitulates to the other one again you haven't arrived at truth and this is very demoralizing so you know this is where escalation I I try to ask people who you know on my team and say never get to a point where you are resolving something by you know who gets exhausted first escalate that I'll help you make the decision like let's because that's so de-energizing and such a terrible lousy way to make a decision do you want to get to the resolution as quickly as possible because that ultimately leads to high velocity of the yes and you want to try to get as close to truth as possible so you want like you know exhausting the other person is not truth seeking yes and compromise is not truth seeking so you know it doesn't mean now and there are a lot of cases where no one knows the real truth and that's where disagree commit can come in um but it's it's um escalation is better than War of Attrition escalate to you know to your boss and say hey we can't agree on this we like each other we're respectful of each other but we strongly disagree with each other we need you to you know make a decision here so we can move forward but decisiveness moving forward quickly on on decisions as quickly as as you responsibly can is how you increase velocity most of what slows things down is and is taking too long to make decisions at all skill levels you know so it has to be part of the culture to get high velocity you know Amazon has a million and a half people and the company is still fast we're still decisive we're still quick and that's because the culture supports that at every scale in a in a distributed way try to maximize the velocity of decisions exactly that
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