Leadership and management at their cores are about decision making. Your ability to make a good one may be enhanced if you understand which type you’re being asked to make.
Regard the types of decision, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos once wrote to his shareholders:
“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. We can call these Type 1 decisions.
“But most decisions aren’t like that – they are changeable, reversible – they’re two-way doors. If you’ve made a suboptimal Type 2 decision, you don’t have to live with the consequences for that long. You can reopen the door and go back through. Type 2 decisions can and should be made quickly by high judgment individuals or small groups.”
I hope you’ll take some time for a deeper dive on understanding Type 1 and Type 2, aka “Reversible and Irreversible decisions”, before you need to make your next one.
