One of the techniques that helps me manage decisions better as a leader is a method I’ve read about in the book related to Amazon. The book is titled “The Bezos Letters: 14 Principles to Grow Your Business Like Amazon”. The book contains several good ideas and principles. I would recommend the book to you, dear reader, if you wish to start a business of your own or if you want to develop leadership and product development skills. However, for the article, I will focus on the method called type 1 and type 2 decisions.

Type 1 Decisions: “One-way Door” Decisions

The first type of decision is categorized as a One-way door. One-way door decisions are of high-stakes and once acted upon are very difficult to reverse. Additionally, When encountering this type, it is better to take your time and gather sufficient information. More often than not, these decisions require deliberations. In my case, I gather different perspectives before making up my mind. Fortunately, type 1 decisions are not that frequent and will not resurface every week.

Examples of such decisions are :

• Deciding whether to enter a new market or not.
• Making a major acquisition or not.
• Developing a new product category and expanding to a new niche.

Type 2 Decisions: “Two-way Door” Decisions

The second type of decision is categorized as a two-way door. These decisions are reversible. Two-way Door decisions could be taken fast and be used as a learning tool to test your ideas; Normally low in risk in comparison with Type 1 decisions. In other words, if you are wrong, you won’t lose much resources. Furthermore, you can act on these decisions with less information. Type 2 decisions are more common and thus be encountered frequently.

Another aspect to take into account is who gets to make the decision. As a leader, you can create a culture in your team of decentralized decision-making of type 2. Meaning people are allowed to make type 2 decisions by themselves. However, you should always provide guidelines and communicate objectives to teammates. By doing so, they can base the decision on their understanding of your position.

Hope that this information is helpful and will allow you to make better decisions. Thank you for tuning and see you soon!