2 Way Doors

Amazon has a concept of 1 way and 2 way doors.

A one way door decision is where there’s no going back once the decision is made.

A two way door is a decision that, if you end up feeling like it’s the wrong outcome, you can reverse it and try a different approach.

When you get to a decision meeting, identity if this is a one or two way door. If a 2 way and there’s general consensus it might be a good idea from the team to try it but you disagree, try Disagree and Commit and trial it for a fixed period (say between 7-14 weeks). You may be surprised that it turns out to be the right call.

Similar to disagree and commit, it allows you to provide ownership and decision making to your team to make it more of a meritocracy.

You should also log these decisions throughout your cycle and review them at given points throughout the year.

Try asking yourself these questions:

Was this the correct decisions to make at the time? If not, why?

Was there information we didn’t have or were there biases in place?

If you can set up a system of periodic review, it’ll make everyone’s decision making much better as they’re able to reflect on previous decisions made with hindsight.