8 Ways to Hack Analysis Paralysis

I was once working with a client who wanted better decision making in their organization. Partway through the effort, he exploded in exasperation, “You’re creating meeting design when I asked for decision-making design! Why are we spending so much time figuring out meetings?!” My response was, “Where do decisions get made?” He sheepishly replied, “Meetings.”

Now, this is not always the case. In some organizations, decisions are made in the meeting before the meeting. In some they are made in the meeting after the meeting. In some, they are made in the break room, on the golf course, social hour at church, or on the sidelines of a youth soccer game. Study this in your organization to get past ‘analysis paralysis’ and design more effective decision-making moments.

We do know that the most challenging innovation behavior is decision-making. Whether it is to determine the next large-scale investment area, or which feature to prioritize, lacking rigorous decision-making design can contribute to swirl, waste, frustration and lack of competitiveness. Standing up committees are a very common approach to solving decision making, however without clear objectives and accountability, committees often do not serve their constituents and can even prevent progress.

Beginning with a primary ‘servant leadership’ approach (i.e., the committee serves the business, not vice versa), we design committees that are guided by eight principles to help overcome these challenges.

How the Amazon ‘6-Page Memo’ Applies the Principles

Take the famed Amazon 6-page memo as an example of these principles in action. Why is this mechanism like this so powerful and effective? It applies the principles in a simple, elegant, dummy-proof format.

My favorite part of the 6-page memo format is when all the people in the room sit in silence for 30 minutes reading the memo. Why? Because we all know about the “curse of the pre-read.” Have you ever, like me, received pre-reading in the form of a 200-page slide deck at 11 pm before the 8 am meeting? That certainly doesn’t lend itself to priming me for productive decision-making.

Regardless of the length of the pre-reading, your meeting is bound to have three types of people:

1. Those who completed the pre-reading, took copious notes and have an opinion about what should happen next
2. Those who admit they did not complete the pre-reading or did not read it thoroughly
3. Those who did not complete the pre-reading, but lie and say they did

Now you have a situation where some are trying to make sense of the information (diverging), while others have already made sense of it. All the while, the group is trying to move toward a decision (converging) and you are caught in a big fat, as we call it, ‘swirl.’ Making the pre-reading time a part of the agenda gives everyone the time to read it, suspend judgment, and makes no assumptions as to who are the responsible, truthful adults who came prepared. It also prevents the author from having to turn in the memo a week in advance so that everyone has adequate time to read it, in which time parts of the memo itself may have become obsolete.

How Will You Hack Your Decisions?

In following the principles, we can come together, bring our collective wisdom and make space for debate. Once we have had an opportunity to disagree and commit, we can get outta our own way while those with the closest work proximity get through this pre-determined funding gate and we know that we have made way for progress over process.