You can see where this is going. The answer lies, as it so often does, somewhere in the middle, in a balanced approach. It’s absolutely critical to stay open minded, flexible, and to check your ego at the door to reverse your previous opinion if warranted. But at some point, you and the team must lock in and move forward.Here’s a simple trick I used to use to maintain the right balance. I took an old saying and put a twist on it, sharing it with my team as a mantra: Debate 70: Decide 30: Commit 100.It means that we first allotted a certain amount of time to decide on something important. We’d spend 70 percent of that time debating differing points of view in a healthy, productive fashion and 30 percent of our time carefully funneling toward a decision. Then, after we’d decided (again allowing for a fair amount of back and forth per Bezos’s point), we 100 percent committed to the decision. Debate. Decide. Commit.We set very strict rules at that point for what could open up a decision made; it was primarily only new and obvious pivotal data that could do so.The approach really worked. People felt heard but also felt the herd was moving forward. You can apply this approach too to get the best out of the spirit of what Bezos said.
Giancarlo Angulo's Blog