How to make good decisions?
Building something great is about making thousands of decisions. What problem do we focus on? What features to build? How should they work? What tech should we use? How should we deliver it to potential users? PMs need to be decision-machines. Once I understood this I set out to get better at it.
As with any skill it takes practice. But simply putting 10.000 hours in will not automatically make you a pro. We need deliberate practice. That’s why I’m sharing my “training routine” for making better decisions. These are the steps I recommend to make good decisions,
My decision-making process:
Whole problem
I’m an industrial designer by training. We’ve learned to zoom out and see the problem in its full context.Energy
Then decide on the importance of the problem. How much energy should you spend on it?People
Make sure to Involve the right people. Who should be a partner? Who should be informed?Alternatives
Create a list that contains all options (exhaustive) without overlap in the options (exclusive)Decide
Use simple and (somewhat) objective criteria to select the best path forwardCommunicate
Your decision is only as good as your ability to communicate itReflect
Reserve time to reflect on your decisions
What did you miss? What would you do differently next time?
Sounds interesting? Let’s dive in!
Whole problem
Start with zooming out. Are you looking at the whole problem? Or just a tiny part of it? In what context does the problem occur? Try to act like a designer: be curious and ask why (a lot!). This is what Bryan Chesky did when creating the user journey map of the Airbnb experience:
Energy
Then decide how much energy you want to spend on the decision. For this, we’re stealing a framework from Jeff Bezos. We look at two things:
Impact: How much will this decision impact our company?
Reversibility: How easy is it to undo the decision?
The more energy your decision requires, the more helpful my process will be.
If it’s a “⚡️” decision please don’t take the trouble to go through all of these steps.
Your time is better spend elsewhere.
People
Now pick the people that should be involved. This is an important step to avoid drama. Note that people don’t need to be involved in the same way: I have another matrix for that (love ‘m ;))
Alternatives
Now list all the alternatives. Make sure they are MECE: Mutually Exclusive, Collectively Exhaustive. Or, in simple English: Is there no overlap between the options? And are all possibilities on the list?
Criteria & Decision
Now it’s time to make the decision. You won’t believe it, but this step is often the easiest. Select the criteria you care most about and rate your alternatives. I'd advise max. 5 criteria to keep things simple.
Communication
Your decision is only as good as your ability to communicate it. Make sure people know what has been decided, why, and how the decision was made. Make this information easy to access. This way you can refer back to what has been decided when a new discussion arises. Also, it allows you to go back later to see how your thinking has evolved.
Reflection
Finally, I’m carving out time to reflect on my decisions. Only when you have data and progressive insights you will know if you did the right thing. Reflecting on your past decisions with current knowledge makes you see the gaps. What did you miss? How can you prevent that from happening next time? This is where the real learning happens.
These 7 steps are my process for becoming better and better at decision-making.
I’m not nearly where I want to be yet, but I can’t wait for all the compounding to pay off. My decisions will be insanely good when I’m 50.
What happened in Dutch tech? 🇳🇱
MessagebirdBird power move 🐦Nice piece on 2nd-order effects of Adyen’s success 💰
Monumental emerges from stealth mode 🧱
Internet things I enjoyed 🤓
Naval dropping wisdom bombs
That’s it! I was offline skiing for a bit 😉
See you in March!