Decision-making

A framework that has helped me understand that there are many ways to make a good decision

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A long time ago I was an Instructor at the National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS). NOLS uses wilderness expeditions as a way to teach leadership skills. I worked there immediately after college, teaching their curriculum and leading 75-day mountaineering and sea kayaking trips in Patagonia and Alaska. They have student courses for people in high school and college, as well as adults, and they also train professional organizations like NASA, the US military, Google, and Wharton Business School. 

Working for NOLS and teaching their curriculum was hands down the most effective management training I’ve ever had, and I regularly rely on lessons from that time. 

One NOLS framework that I go back to often is their group decision-making framework. That framework helps leaders understand that there are different ways to make decisions and develops their ability to use different decision-making styles that involve their team more, or less, depending on the situation.

I was indoctrinated with the framework early in my professional career, and the main things it taught me that I still think about today are:

(a) there are very clear, distinct types of decision-making that are good for different moments and types of decisions and 

(b) the best organizations in the world are very methodical about how they make decisions, and use systems to select the best type of decision-making for the problem at hand 

Even though the framework was designed for groups on long wilderness trips, leaders in any organization can use it to make better decisions for their company. It is always top of mind for me as I work with startups because honestly, most startup CEOs and new leaders are bad at being conscious and methodical around decision-making. They are either too team-reliant or too self-reliant and miss out on the variety of decision-making styles in between. To some extent, they miss out on the true power of a team.

My goal with sharing this framework is to push you to think about what your default style of decision-making is. I also want to help more new leaders realize that the best leaders use many forms of decision-making AND communicate well about why they’re using a certain style. 

The NOLS group decision-making framework

The framework lays out 6 different ways to make decisions in a group. It also provides a simple way to figure out which style is best for which situation (e.g., you can bushwack for two hours straight uphill and get to camp quickly, or you can hike for five hours mostly on a trail and get to camp just before dinner – what’s the best way to make that decision with a group?).

In the NOLS framework, there are 3 styles where the group decides and 3 where the leader decides. And in the NOLS system, the urgency of the decision often dictates who makes it. Urgent decisions fall to the leader, but when there’s more time, the group can be involved. (Continuing with our example: in a case where there is no urgency or danger but simply a choice about the best way to hike to camp, maybe letting the group decide or at least getting heavy input makes the most sense.) 

While this urgency rule might not always apply in a startup setting, it’s still so helpful to see 6 types of decision-making laid out so plainly.

“Group decides” includes: 

• Delegate – give ownership of the decision to another member of the group

• Consensus – like a jury, where everyone needs to agree

• Vote – like majority rules…

These styles typically take more time but get more group buy-in off the bat. 

“Leader decides” includes:

• Consultative I – get input then decide

• Consultative II – almost decide, then get input

• Directive – only the leader decides 

“Leader decides” styles tend to be faster but can cause more group grumbles. 

The military is virtually 100% Directive, and there’s a clear reason for that. They are regularly in high-risk situations where people might die and need an incredibly fast way to make hard decisions. The answer: people follow orders from their commander. 

But while the military always uses Directive and a jury always uses Consensus, I think most startups should be able to span the range, with the leader switching from one style to another depending on the choice that needs to be made. I personally use Consultative I and II most often, but I also know when to Delegate and when to just decide something myself. 

Because I was “raised” in this framework, it helped me be conscious early in my career about what decision-making style I’m using. For most startup founders and new leaders that I work with, though, decision-making is unconscious and organic – they tend to be comfortable with one style and stay there out of habit. 

This can create two types of leaders that are stuck really far on either end of the spectrum: one type that’s too scared of pissing people off so they bias toward using consensus decision-making for everything, and one that’s too willing to make directive decisions without thinking through the downstream effects – the “it’s my way or the highway” style. 

Stuck in Consensus or Directive mode, these leaders miss out on the decision-making styles in the middle, which may actually produce the best results in a lot of situations. 

The ability to use a range of decision-making styles is a skill leaders need to develop. You have to practice breaking out of your comfort zone. And frameworks help with this by forcing you to try styles that are best for the company, instead of what’s comfortable for you. 

A forcing function: How decision-making systems can help you make better choices

The NOLS framework illustrates how a decision-making system can force leaders into doing what’s best for the situation rather than what’s comfortable for them.

Leaders who are stuck in “directive” act like they don’t value input from others. This can look like the executive swoop-and-poop – vetoing the performance management system that your entire executive team thinks is necessary, deciding complicated strategic issues without input, having to review or approve every decision, hire, etc, that your execs want to make... Because of this behavior, these leaders will typically burn through their leadership team quickly (and probably burn out themselves).

And what about leaders who are way too consensus-based? The NOLS framework is designed around the wilderness context, where elements like weather, tides, and injuries change quickly and add risk. The river’s rising: we need to cross it now or wait three days. The leader decides what to do because it’s faster. There’s no time for a vote. 

In startup land, it is rarely a life or death situation, so it’s easy to default to Consensus or heavy input. For Consensus-biased leaders, the bigger a decision is, the more you want to involve the group. But scaling startups have so many major life events where Consensus or other “group decides” styles would actually be damaging – like firing an executive, changing goals, choosing to stop doing something, or layoffs. Those are instances where some form of input from key individuals matters, but consensus simply doesn't make sense. 

Another great example of a choice like this is hiring, especially key executives. New leaders are often way too Consensus-driven about this because it feels scary to bring in someone that people don’t like. You can hire someone even if the existing team doesn’t like them as long as you believe they’re the best leader for the future of the business. You obviously need to weigh these things carefully, but just because you had everybody interview the candidate doesn’t mean their votes are equal. 

When I worked with Mark Zuckerberg at the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, he used a simple framework for how to incorporate other people’s input into hiring decisions. 

He was clear in his mind about which interviewers were “decide” interviewers and which were “context” interviewers. A “decider” was make-or-break for the hiring decision, while the “context” interviewer’s role was more to share context with the candidate as well as to get context for themselves. 

“Context” interviewers were not vetting the candidate unless they saw something they considered a red flag – an important reason not to hire the person. They were more like passengers on the journey, while “decide” interviewers were critical to the hiring decision. We were explicit with people about their roles in the process, and we also staged the interview process so that the “decide” interviews happened first and the context interviews happened after we knew that we really liked a candidate.

I love this framework for two reasons. It’s simple, and it clearly and consciously delineates whose input matters for the decision. Yes, it’s difficult to tell members of this future executive’s team that they are “context” interviewees and don’t get a vote in who their future manager is, but isn’t that better than pretending their opinion matters and hiring someone they said “No Hire” to? 

I can also guarantee you that it’s better than designing a hiring process around everyone on the future team liking the exec – there’s no way that’s the most important job description detail for this person. 

Finding your system and bringing your team along

Mark’s hiring framework is just one example of a leader who built a system that worked for him – it’s effectively Consultative I from the NOLS framework. But the way he structured it helped create clarity for those involved in the decision and helped make the process more efficient. It’s also clearly better than Directive or Consensus in that situation. 

Here’s another example: NOLS trains NASA shuttle teams that go into space together, and one of the most interesting stories I heard was from an instructor who led the course for a shuttle team that only made Consensus decisions. He said they were the fastest Consensus decision-makers he’d ever seen. They chose Consensus as their style and got really efficient at it — making a conscious choice and building a practice around it allowed them to mitigate how slow that style usually is.

Decision-making is most effective and efficient when everyone’s on the same page. At NOLS, we even had students state the decision-making style they planned to use in the moment so that other people could be with them on that journey. 

As you find your own style and system for decision-making, it is probably worth sitting down with your leadership team and making this a group exercise. What is the framework you want to use to verbalize how you’re making different decisions? Maybe as a team, you have a default style and some alternates. Maybe certain types of decisions – like hiring – always get made a certain way. The point is to both be conscious about how you’re making decisions and to be clear so that everyone can be on the same page about it. 

Over time, as the leader of a growing company, you’ll face more and more scary choices that you need to make. Having a framework that you and your team decide to use together can both make the decisions feel less daunting and help you feel less alone as a leader.