Bonus 8 — Decision Making for Managers

60-Second Summary

Bonus module 8 of the program (Critical Skills extension). Theme: Make better decisions faster — and document them.
Decision log (5 min per significant decision) — the ritual you install.
Same rhythm as weeks 1–12: pre-read, cohort live, ritual, falsifiable homework.
Closes a high-priority gap most new-manager programs ignore.

The single highest-leverage thing a manager can install is a personal decision system. Without one, you default to consensus-seeking (slow, anodyne), or HiPPO (you decide alone and lose buy-in). With one, you match the decision type to the right process — and the team learns to predict how you'll decide, which is what trust actually is.

What the evidence says

Bezos 'Type 1 / Type 2' (one-way vs two-way doors): irreversible decisions deserve high deliberation; reversible decisions should be made fast — the most common error is treating Type 2 like Type 1.
RAPID / DACI: published decision-rights frameworks reduce time-to-decide by 30–50% in field studies; the gain is from clarity on who decides, not on quality of analysis.
Kahneman, Sibony & Sunstein (Noise, 2021): unwanted variability in decisions is often larger than bias, and a written checklist reduces it more than training does.

Pre-read (60 minutes)

Read: Bezos's one-way vs two-way door distinction — and the 70% information rule for two-way doors (15 min).
Read: RAPID (Recommend, Agree, Perform, Input, Decide) vs DACI (Driver, Approver, Contributors, Informed) (15 min).
Read: Common decision biases — confirmation, anchoring, sunk cost, availability, status quo (20 min).
Reflect (10 min): the last three hard decisions you made. Which were one-way doors? Who should have decided? Did you document the rationale?

Live session (90 minutes)

Cohort flow with a senior coach

1
Door classification drill (15 min)
Coach reads 10 real decisions; cohort calls one-way or two-way. The aim is calibration: most managers over-classify as one-way and under-decide as a result.
2
Consensus vs Consult vs Decide (20 min)
Coach walks through the three modes and when each applies. Cohort sorts 8 upcoming decisions into a mode and names who else is involved.
3
RAPID/DACI assignment (20 min)
Pick one real upcoming decision; assign RAPID roles on paper. Coach challenges: who has Recommend authority? Who has Decide? Why isn't it the same person? Common error: collapsing Recommend and Decide into one role.
4
Pre-mortem (20 min)
For one decision, run a 15-minute pre-mortem: 'It's six months from now and this decision failed. Why?' Coach demonstrates how it surfaces risks no upfront analysis ever does.
5
Wrap (10 min)
Each manager commits to writing one decision memo this week using the standard template.

The ritual you install

Decision log (5 min per significant decision)

For any decision that affects more than one person or is hard to reverse, write: (1) the decision in one sentence, (2) the options considered, (3) what would change your mind, (4) decision mode (consensus / consult / decide), (5) review date. Store in a team-visible decision log. Review monthly. This is the cheapest learning system a manager can install.

Modern tools for this skill

Category	Examples (2026)	Use
Frameworks	RAPID, DACI, RACI, Bezos doors, Eisenhower, Cynefin	Match framework to decision type
Templates	1-page decision memo, pre-mortem template, decision log spreadsheet	Lower the cost of writing it down
Async decisioning	Loom + comments, Notion decision DB, Linear projects with decision sections	Decisions made async ship faster and document themselves
Anti-bias	Red team / pre-mortem, checklists (Gawande), reference-class forecasting	Counter the biases you can predict in yourself

Copy-paste AI prompt

I have a decision to make: [describe the decision, the options, who's affected, reversibility]. Help me: (1) classify it as Type 1 or Type 2, (2) recommend a decision mode (consensus / consult / decide / delegate), (3) identify the 3 biases I'm most likely to fall into here, (4) draft a one-page decision memo with options, criteria, recommendation, and what would change my mind.

Homework — falsifiable artefacts

Decision log created and shared with team.
One real decision memo written using the standard template.
One pre-mortem run on an upcoming Type 1 decision.
One decision delegated explicitly to a report — with named scope, decision rights, and report-back date.

Success signal

By end of this module, you can classify any decision in 30 seconds (one-way/two-way × consensus/consult/decide), your team knows how you decide before you decide, and your decision log has at least four entries you can review with your manager.

Reviewer notes

HR Director (15+ yrs)

Indecisive managers create more attrition than bad managers. People can live with a 'no'; they can't live with 'we'll see' forever. A written decision system makes 'no' kinder because it shows the reasoning.

Line Manager (20+ yrs)

The decision log changed my career. Six months in I could look back and see exactly which decisions I'd got wrong and why — and that's the only way you actually learn instead of just accumulating war stories.

OB / HR Professor (25+ yrs)

March & Simon (1958) named the manager's core task as decision-making under bounded rationality. Sixty years later, the evidence is clear: structured processes and written records outperform talent alone. The intervention is shockingly cheap.

Written by Pawan Joshi.Sources cited inline.

First published 30 Jun 2026See site changelog →