The Decision Bottleneck
More flattening, more information, not a ton of good practice around decision-making.
Decision Making
Who decides what, with whom, and how; the most consequential design choice in any organization.
15 posts
How to Eliminate Slippery Decisions
Most of the time when I ask teams how they make decisions, I get a lot of ... silence. And then either: a) "nobody's ever asked me that"; or b) "I don't think we ever know when we are making a decision"; or c) "we make too many decisions to have a 'way' to make decisions."
How to Fix Your Prioritization Problem
Prioritization isn't a tool problem. Or an individual performance problem. It's a strategy problem, and not one that you can fix with a better slide deck. It's about good diagnosis, a clear guiding policy, and truly connected actions... *made memorable* and *made practical.*
Use DICE instead of RACI (Video)
Don't use a RACI. If you must use something like it, use DICE (Decides, Informs, Consults, Executes). It's easier to understand, and shines a brighter spotlight on problems.
Why Nothing Gets Done Around Here
Hundreds of thousands of hours are getting wasted on bad decision-rights. It’s got to stop. (Contains at least two good ways to fix this problem.)
Netflix, Democracy, and ~Operational Excellence
Why Netflix's approach to complexity – going all the way back to 2001 – creates better results.
Five Org Design Things N° 6
The 95th percentile isn’t that impressive; how DRIs worked at Apple; Effective leaders decide about deciding; Rooting out bias in decisions; AI and interest rates
Use DICE instead of RACI
RACI is vague, hard to use, and reinforces the "what the hell is happening here" status quo. DICE is specific, easy to use, and shines a bright light on dysfunction.
Type 2 Organizations
Some decisions are consequential and irreversible or nearly irreversible — one-way doors — and these decisions must be made methodically, carefully, slowly, with great deliberation and consultation. If you walk through and don’t like what you see on the other side, you can’t get back to where you were before.
Four Holacracy Keepers
Four key things to keep from years practicing Holacracy: Rule of Law; Continuous Participatory Reorganization; Structured Decisions; Defined Output Formats.
Five Practical Things N° 1
Rules for Critique Tools for thinkingAn excerpt from Daniel Dennett’s new book, Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking, outlines seven of Dennett’s tools for thikottke.orgJason Kottke These basically work for feedback, too. Copying mostly whole-cloth from Kottke until the book he references magically appears via Prime.
Objection Criteria & Strategy Reviews
Along with a few other folks in the UC “Management” crew, I spent Monday and Tuesday learning about Holacracy. It’s an interesting organizing idea that deserves a much longer set of posts, but the five-second version is that it’s a explicitly structured, distributed-authority, adaptive decision-making system that aims