#11: One-way Door vs. Two-way Door Decisions
Strategies on decisiveness from Jeff Bezos and Jocko Willink
Recently, Jeff Bezos did his first long form podcast that I am aware of with Lex Fridman. While I've always known that Amazon has been and continues to be an incredibly effective organization, I have yet to spend much time studying the man who built the company. So, I was excited to gain some new insight into the mind of the man, and it certainly did not disappoint.
One segment of the podcast that really stuck with me was a 13 minute span where Lex and Jeff discuss decision making. This conversation is sparked during a discussion about Blue Origin, and Jeff claiming that they need to and will become the World's Most Decisive Company. Then comes the gold, what are the mechanisms to use to become the World's Most Decisive Company? While I'm sure there's much more than what was discussed on this podcast, they discuss:
One-way vs. Two-way door decisions
Dispute Resolution
This week I'll dive into one-way vs. two-way door decisions, and next week I'll touch on dispute resolution.
One-way door vs. Two-way door decisions
Here's Jeff's description of one and two way doors from the podcast:
“If you make the wrong decision, if it's a two-way door decision, you walk out the door, you pick a door, you walk out, and you spend a little time there. It turns out to be the wrong decision, you can come back in and pick another door.
Some decisions are so consequential, and so important, and so hard to reverse that they really are one-way door decisions. You go in that door, you're not coming back. And those decisions have to be made very deliberately, very carefully. If you can think of yet another way to analyze the decision, you should slow down and do that. So, you know, when I was the CEO of Amazon, I often found myself in the position of being the Chief Slowdown Officer because somebody would be bringing me a one-way door decision. And I would say okay, I can think of three more ways to analyze that. So let's go do that. Because we are not gonna be able to reverse this one easily. Maybe you can reverse it, but it's gonna be very costly and very time consuming. We really have to get this one right from the beginning.
And what happens, unfortunately in companies, what can happen is that you have a one size fits all decision making process where you end up using the heavyweight process on all decisions. Including the lightweight ones. Two-way door decisions should mostly be made by single individuals or by very small teams deep in the organization. And one-way door decisions are the ones the irreversible ones, those are the ones that should be elevated up to you know, the senior most executives who should slow them down and make sure that the right thing is being done.”
This is a great framework for decisions, and one that I hadn't been introduced to before. One thing that hit me in this message from Jeff was his comment that what typically happens in many organizations is they have a one size fits all decision making process. I've written in the past that the success of any organization is dependent on the rate it can tackle the problem set associated with its mission. The ability to tackle problems is dependent on the ability of the organization to be decisive. If we use the heavyweight decision making process to solve lightweight challenges, we will not achieve the optimal velocity in our organizations. If we don't proactively build cultures that recognize differing levels of problems, we will inevitably slide into a culture where a one-size fits all approach is taken.
Detach
I love how Jeff points out that it is not always obvious if a decision is a one-way or a two-way door decision. He describes how he often found himself being the Chief Slowdown Officer because people would present him with one-way door decisions but he could identify different ways to approach that problem. Lex and Jeff even go on to discuss how being able to identify other two-way door pathways is a skill. Jocko has put the best word to this skill that I have found, and that word is "detach".
Jocko often says that you can't solve a problem while you're in the problem. We've got to be able to detach to see the full picture of what's going on and allow ourselves to find those creative, two-way door solutions.
Analogous Jocko story
This framework reminds me of an excerpt from Jocko Podcast 147 where Jocko discusses how to make better decisions. Jocko details an example where there's a building with a bad guy in it and he's got to make the decision on how to engage:
"So instead of we go or we don't go (one-way door decision), there's actually a bunch of different decisions that you can make besides we can go or don't go:
1. Let's put eyes on the target for a little while
2. Let's call and see if where there's any other intelligence
3. Let's put an aircraft over
4. Let's push a little bit closer and monitor
So there's all kinds of decisions that you can make that allow the the situation to develop further and maybe reveal the proper decision to you in the long run."
While he doesn't use Jeff's exact analogy, we can see that Jocko is turning a one-way door decision, whether or not to engage, into smaller two-way door decisions.
Wrapping up
One important lesson I've learned and continue to relearn is how difficult it can be to detach yourself from a problem. It's easy to read a story like Jocko's above and think that it's obvious you would see those various two-way door decisions he lays out if you were in those shoes. That's simply not the case. That's why Jeff points out that he was often able to find two-way door solutions that senior executives at Amazon hadn't identified before they were brought to him. Jocko has a saying about detachment: "The solution to the problem is not going to be found in the problem". As we work through problems, we've got proactively work to detach ourselves from the situation or we risk remaining blind to potential solutions. It's a skill I'll continue to develop in the decades to come.
Additional content
While I covered some of the content that Jocko and Jeff have provided in this article, they both touch on this topic more so I wanted to share those additional references. I'm sure I'll cover many of these in much more detail in the future.
Discussed in this article
Lex Podcast 405: One-way vs. Two-way door discussion (timestamps 59:59 - 1:03:08)
Not discussed in this article
Amazon's 2015 Letter to Shareholders by Jeff Bezos: "Invention Machine" section
Leadership Strategy and Tactics by Jocko Willink: Part Two, Chapter Two, Section H titled "Iterative Decision Making"
Jocko Podcast 91 excerpt: In this podcast Jocko gives a great business example of turning a one-way door decision into a multiple door decision (timestamps 1:13-3:40).
Detaching:
Detach... It's a Super Power: 1-minute video from Echelon Front (Jocko's leadership consulting company) for the quickest intro to detachment from Jocko.
How to Detach: A Super Power for Life and Leadership: 10-minute excerpt from Jocko on Andrew Huberman's podcast
Leadership Strategy and Tactics by Jocko Willink: Part One, Chapter 1, Section A title "First PlatoonL Detach". This same story is covered in the Andrew Huberman podcast excerpt listed above.
Jocko Podcast 336: If you know me you know I listen to a whole lot of Jocko's podcasts, and this may be the one I've replayed more than any. Jocko discusses how detaching is a superpower and details a great story about detachment from SEAL training.
I have many more references for fantastic content from Jocko on detachment so if you happen to crank through what I've listed above and are still looking for more, please do not hesitate to reach out.
Get after it.
