Hands up: who's making this decision?
Why being clear about people's roles when you're making decisions leads to better decisions; less stress; and better products and outcomes over all.
One of a number of deep dives into decision making for Product managers..that I’ve been working on..
TL; DR
Being clear on exactly who gets to play what role in decision making is a critical input into better decisions
A big part of this is you as a PM being clear about the role, or roles, that you are playing - important for both the decision and your career
DACI (Driver, Approver, Consulted, Informed)- provides a good framework for this - but as with all frameworks, it's only a broad guidelines.
Split your Consulted into 'Big C's - who the approver won't make a decision without; and others - make sure you capture dissent in this group.
Communicate frequently and clearly to as broad an 'Interested' group as possible.
Decision Making: it's a people thing
Pretty much every company has very clear guidelines for who gets to approve what on financial spending. £20 on sandwiches for a team meeting? Get your manager to sign the expense off. £200K on new software licences? That one might have to go to the CFO. £20m on buying a company? That one's heading to the board.
But when it comes to making product decisions - the lines about exactly who gets to decide what are always much more blurred. They will not just differ from company to company, but also team to team, product to product, and sometimes decision to decision.
Whether you're an APM in a first job or a CPO in your 10th, or anything in between, one of the skills you have to develop is a good sense of exactly who you need to involve in any given decision - and how you need to include them.
A cynical soul might just think this is about politics and etiquette. To a point. But it's much more than that. Good decisions are the foundations that great products are built on; and the foundations of good decisions are the combination of people and evidence that are brought to the table.
One thing I've learned over the years: If you work with the right people in the right way, good decisions will often make themselves.
It's also a YOU thing
A big part of this is being clear about the role that you play. This is partly to help with the actual decision, but also because you totally selfishly and utterly reasonably want to make sure you come across well.
How you handle yourself in any decision-making process is going to be one of those things that either you will be judged on.
You want to show you're capable of making the big calls, but at the same time, you want to show you're consultative and collaborative.
There are fine lines to tread: If you make decisions without involving anyone - you can be accused of being wreckless and not a team player; but if you include too many people, you can be accused of analysis paralysis. And as with most things in product management, it's often never quite clear where those lines are.
This applies to all types of decision. It's very common these days for people to quote Jeff Bezos's 2016 shareholder letter about High Velocity Decision Making when he split decisions into 'Type 1' (existential, 'one way door' decisions); and 'Type 2' (easily reversible decisions); and warned against using Type 1 structures and processes for Type 2 decisions.
People tend to quote that bit and move on. Well, as we'll see it's easy to put a fair bit of structure about some nice big fat Type 1 decisions. But what if your days are full of Type 2 decisions? Can you make them without speaking to anyone 'because Jeff says'? Well you can, but I wouldn't recommend it.
And it's a source of stress thing
A lack of clarity over who is meant to be doing exactly what in any given decision is also a massive source of stress. Well - two different types of stress, actually..
1. Unempowered Stress If I think back to the thousands of 1:1s I've had over the years, the grumpiest ones normally always involve someone complaining that they're either not allowed to make a decision on issue x without consulting person y; or that they aren't being consulted on decision z by team a.
2. WoW (weight of the world) Stress The other type of stress is when an indvidual either feels they have to take on the weight of the world and take on responsibility for everything involved in a decision. It often happens when people just get promoted and they're keen to impress.
You can never utterly avoid these - especially the first. But you can minimise them by making the implicit explicit - by being clear about exactly what your decision making process is, and how it works.
Now when you see that - you might not like it, but at least you can see it for what it is. And if it’s truly systemic - a hard cast way of working - and you can’t live with it, it might be sign you should be working somewhere else. But if you don’t first frame your process in some way then only frustration will follow.
Of course, there's a framework for it: DACI
DACI stands for Driver; Approver: Contributor; Informed.
So the Driver is the person who pushes the decision through the organisation - gathering the evidence, and the people necessary to make it. The Approver is the person who gives the final rubber stamp to the decision. Contributors are those who are consulted along the way. And the Informed - well I guess you can work that out for yourself.
And while its not the only neat acronym for allocating responsibilities in a decision making process (try googling RAPID to see a more meaty model created by Bain) its simple and obvious, and it serves my purposes here as a structure for a discussion about the different roles - how they often blend, and importantly what role or what combination of roles you play.
Who are you?
If you're working on some really big 'Type 1' style decision, then the rigid structure of DACI model will work just fine, and 9 times out of 10 you will be the Driver.
It's your job to push the whole initiative forward, bringing together the evidence and people, and surfacing everything - including your recommendation - to some senior leader, who will give you the thumbs up or down. This is 'Big Decision' mode.
But what about some of those smaller decisions - what to do next on your backlog? Or a decision on what bits of functionality you should prioiritise on a new feature? Decisions which are important, but which a) are also ultimately reversible and b) you don't want to spend too much time on.
These also happen to be the kind of decisions you come across every day; and even just because they're strictly speaking 'reversible', you're not going to get very far if you are constantly having to burn this week's effort undoing last week's 'high velocity' decisions.
U = D+A OR D+A/2 = OK.
U = D+A+C OR D+A/X ≠ OK.
Just in case that didn't make sense.
It's ok if you're both driving, and approving - effectively consulting with a number of people and then realising you have to make the decision yourself. Getting good at this process takes a bit of practice - and the skill, is really about separating the driving bit from the decision making. A bit more of that in a minute.
It's also ok if you're driving, and you're one of a group of two or three (but please no more!) who are making the decision. Particularly if you work in a relatively tight PM + Engineering Manager + Designer - it's actually great if you can make real decisions as a collective.
What's not ok is if you find yourself as driver approver and you're the only one consulted. Where you are operating entirely in a vacuum. This is a recipe for Weight of the World Stress. If you find yourself in this situation, stop. Think about who you can consult with - even if it's just to bounce some ideas off a peer.
What's also not ok is when there's a large group of people making a decision. Often you might put a number of options out to a vote for a few people. It's great to capture opinions from far and wide (the importance of the 'C' group) - but they are just that, the actual decision making has to live with a very small group - or an individual. This is why you need to be clear upfront about who exactly is Approving as opposed to being Consulted.
If U = D + A: Drive first. Decide next
Too often I've seen PMs who are in the combined driving and approving role, totally spin out of control. The reason is they're almost always trying to decide at the same time as they're gathering evidence. The result is an ever-evolving array of options and pros and cons shaped by whoever they spoke to last; and a lack of cut through.
The trick - and it is a bit of mental self-trickery is to compartmentalise the two processes. Get your evidence first, then switch into decision making mode. You need to put all your initial energy into seeking out and speaking to the right people, gathering useful evidence, understanding what they options are; and also understanding what they selection criteria for any set of options should be. Then and only then can you start to weigh everything up.
If you think you know the answer - put it on hold. What you actually know is your hunch. But what you really need to do is to listen to others, to the evidence..and then decide.
This isn't an excuse to spend weeks in an endless cycle of meetings. It might all happen in a day or two.
The Consulted: Big C's and Little c's
The group that will matter the most are your C's - the people who are consulted. For a small decision in a small organisation this might just be one or two people. In a big one, you need to be careful to avoid an ever swelling list of names suggested with those imortal words 'oh, have you spoken to...'. It's vital
However, not all C's are equal. I find it handy to split them into Big C's and little c's.
Simply: Big C's are people you won't be able to make a decision without. Little c's are people who's opinions you believe will be useful.
Big C's: who your approver won't make a decision without
A big part of working out how to be effective in an organisation is working out who has influence over the people you're hoping to influence - and being able to leverage them.
Simple example: If you're Driving a big decision that your CEO is ultimately going to have to Approve and there's a large legal side to it, you can guarantee that your CEO is going to want to know that you've spoken with whichever legal person it is that he trusts; and he will want to know exacty what they think. The same is likely to be true in any specialist area: Sales, Regulatory, Tech architecture. These are your Big C's. Find out who they are, meet with them as soon as possible (they're always going to be the hardest to track down) get their view written down (and agreed with them); or better get them in the final meeting.
Obviously, if you're the approver, this is a little simpler. But the same principle applies. Be clear about who you simply won't make this decision without and hold them close.
Little s's: Capture disagreement and diverse opinions
One of the most critical things you have to do is to make sure you're hearing all the different voices on an issue. Hear what people have to say. Get as many options on the table as possible. Speak with the people or teams you know who might disagree with your take on the world. Make sure those voices are captured and reflected when it comes to the ultimate decision.
Avoiding dissenting views while you're gathering evidence has a tendency to come back and bite you later.
Where do you stop consulting?
When you're speaking to people who really aren't helping you with the specific decision you're trying to make. When you find that you're being dragged into adjacent areas. When there's no new evidence or options coming out of the conversation; and you're hitting an echo chamber where the same opinion is being repeated over and over again.
Over time, in any organisation you develop a sense of who is actually useful and who just likes talking. Particularly when you're new in a big organisation, you can get dragged from pillar to post with the 'have you spoken to...?' suggestions. It's never the end of the world to speak to a few too many people. But if you want to make good decisions quickly - hone your judgement over time.
Little C's logistics: async consultation
Something I only learned during lockdown, but wish I'd been able to use previously. Let's say you have 10 people to consult. That could be 10 x 30 minute meetings to set up; take notes at; and then distill - or you can start by sending out a standard form to some or all of them to ask the most pertinent questions. It's the best way to cover ground quickly, and also see who you think might be worth investing more time with. Don't make everything a meeting, unless it really has to be.
The Informed: make sure they are
I'm sure I've read some research that points out that very often there's only a marginal difference in choosing between say, Path A and Path B. The big difference is making sure that everyone understands which path we've chosen, and why, and that they then follow it.
Thanks to the wonder of good old fashioned email, we can keep a near infinite number of people informed on our decisions. We can tell them what we're going to decide, who we're going to consult with, and when we have to decide it.
And when we've decided it, you can then send out a clear explanation of the decision we've made and why. We can use this to make sure that lots of people feel included in a process that they might otherwise feel excluded from; and can also be prompted to add vital information if needed (often this is the best way to capture lurking dissent that, as I've said, can often disruptively bubble up later).
We can do all of this without the need for a single meeting.
And yet, so often we don't. Our tendency to consult with too many people, it’s often to communicate with too few. Try and avoid that.
Frequent, clear communication to whoever is interested is one of the best investments you can make with your time. So do it.