Someone asked me about my management philosophy recently, and after I stopped panicking (I wrote a book, I should have a philosphy… how do you summarize 400 pages and 2 years of your life in one sentence) I came up with:
“My job is to make it easier for people to make good decisions.”
What does that mean?
Firstly it means my job is not to make decisions. It’s my job to ensure decisions get made. Sometimes that means making the decision, but when that’s the case it’s worth thinking about why it was necessary for me to make the decision, and how to change it for next time.
When it comes to changing it for next time, it means considering what people need to make (good) decisions.
The first thing is context. They need to understand how that decision fits in within the priorities and constraints of the organization. Pretty much every organization has some kind of global priority system, and this helps, but is insufficient. The other piece of context is around what else is going on – this is something that managers who typically have much broader context of the organization should be providing.
Second is scope and responsibility. People need to understand what decisions they are allowed to make, and what input is required on those decisions. Process – like tech designs, or other reviews – helps here, but only if people understand the why of the process. The failure mode of process that seems arbitrary is that it negates people’s feeling of responsibility for decisions. This is also where a sense of collective responsibility is important, because otherwise people make decisions that serve an individual but not the team (aka promotion driven development).
Finally, but importantly, is the timeframe of decisions. Often when decisions seem not to make sense, it’s because people are considering different timeframes. For instance decisions made under pressure of a launch date, without considering medium- (not even long-) term consequences. Being clear about what timeframe is important, why, and balancing competing priorities (i.e. not creating unnecessary problems for near future selves).
When make decision making easier, consider:
- The context people need to be effective, and how to provide that in a time-efficient way (i.e. without having people attend every meeting / read every document).
- Ways that reduce unimportant decisions. My canonical example is a style guide – the purpose of a style guide is never to discuss style again.
- Where there is ambiguity (also known as “judgement”), that can be reduced or encoded. One of the fascinating things to me about incident processes, is how much they aim to reduce decision making under pressure, and move a complex problem into something closer to a flow chart.
- What are the parameters that make a decision more broadly impactful, and justifying of additional input / scrutiny.