1/8/2015
A former Google exec on how to make tough decisions quickly -
Quartz
A former Google exec on how to maketough decisions quickly
Think fast. (Kirby Lee-USA TODAYS PORTS
)
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characteristic OFat.
WRITTEN BY
Dave GirouardContributor, First RO UND
Ive long believed that speed is the ultimate weapon in
business.All else being equal, the fastest company in any MARKET
willwin. Speed is a de ning characteristicif not the de ningthe
leader in virtually every industry you look
Review
July 31, 2015
http://qz.com/465060/the-art-of-knowing-when-to-make-a-decision/
In tech, speed is seen primarily as an asset in product
development.Hence the move fast and break things mentality, the
commitmentto minimum viable products and agile development. Many
peoplewould AGREE that speed and agility are how you win when
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1/8/2015
A former Google exec on how to make tough decisions quickly -
Quartz
comes to product.YOD AoeXik Q2qXB1v tTz Gb5
What they fail to grasp is that speed matters to the rest of
thebusiness toonot just product. Google is fast. General Motors
isslow. Startups are fast. Big companies are slow. Its pretty clear
thatfast equals good, but theres relatively little written about
how todevelop the institutional and EMPLOYEE muscle necessary
tomake speed a serious competitive advantage.I believe that speed,
like EXERCISEhabitual.
and eating healthy, can be
Through a prolonged, proactive effort to develop these good
habits,we can convert ourselves as founders, executives,
andEMPLOYEES to be faster, more ef cient company-buildingmachines.
And, when enough members of a team exhibit this set ofhabits, and
are rewarded with reinforcement, compensation, andpromotions, the
organization itself will gain velocity.This is how
CATEGORYmade.
Speed, like EXERCISE andeating healthy, can behabitual.
killers are
So lets break this down. What are thebuilding blocks of speed?
When you think
about it, all business ACTIVITY reallycomes down to two simple
things:Making decisions and executing on decisions. Your success
dependson your ability to develop speed as a habit in both.
Making decisionsA good PLANnext week.
violently executed now is better than a perfect plan
General George Patton said that, and I de nitely subscribe to
it. Doyou remember the last time you were in a meeting and
someonesaid, Were going to make this decision before we leave
theROOM ? How great did that feel? Didnt you just want to hugthat
person?The PROCESS OF making and remaking decisions wastes aninsane
amount of time at companies. The key takeaway: WHEN
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1/8/2015
A former Google exec on how to make tough decisions quickly -
Quartz
decision is made is much more important than WHAT decision
ismade.If, by way of habit, you consistently begin every
decision-makingPROCESS by considering how much time and effort that
decisionis worth, who needs to have input, and when youll have an
answer,youll have developed the rst important muscle for speed.This
isnt to say all decisions should be made quickly. Somedecisions are
more complicated or critical than others. It mightbehoove you to
wait for more information. Some decisions cant beeasily reversed,
or would be too damaging if you CHOOSE poorly.Most importantly,
some decisions dont need to be madeimmediately to maintain
downstream velocity.Deciding on when a decision will be made from
the STARTprofound, powerful change that will speed everything
up.
is a
In my many years at Google, I saw Eric Schmidt use this
approachto decision-making on a regular basisprobably without
eventhinking about it. Because founders Larry and Sergey were
(andare) very strong-minded leaders involved in every major
decision,Eric knew he couldnt make huge unilateral choices. This
couldhave stalled a lot of things, but Eric made sure that
decisions weremade on a speci c timeframea realistic onebut a rm
one. Hemade this a habit for himself and it made a world of
difference forGoogle.Today at Upstart, were a much smaller
Its important toINTERNALIZE howirreversible, fatal, or nonfatal
a decision may be.Very few cant be undone.
company, and were making decisionsthat matter several times a
day. Weredeeply driven by the belief that fastdecisions are far
better than slow ones,and radically better than no decisions.From
day to day, hour to hour, we thinkabout how important each decision
is andhow much time its worth taking.Thereare decisions that
deserve days of debate
and ANALYSIS , but the vast majority arent worth more than
10minutes.Its important to INTERNALIZE
how irreversible, fatal, or non-
fatal a decision may be. Very few cant be
undone.http://qz.com/465060/the-art-of-knowing-when-to-make-a-decision/
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1/8/2015
A former Google exec on how to make tough decisions quickly -
Quartz
Note that speed doesnt require one leader to make all the
callstop-down. The art of good decision making requires that
yougather input and perspective from your team, and then push
towarda nal decision in a way that makes it clear that all voices
wereheard. As Ive grown in my CAREER , Ive moved away fromtelling
people I had the right answer upfront to shaping andsteering the
discussion toward a conclusion. I wouldnt call itconsensus
buildingyou dont want consensus to hold you hostagebut input from
others will help you get to the right decisionfaster, and with
buy-in from the team.This isnt a vote for rash decisions. I can be
a little too pedal to themetal at times, and sometimes my
co-founder Anna will say, Thisis a big DECISION . Even though we
think we know what to do,lets give it 24 hours. Shes SAVED us
multiple times with thatwisdom.
Theres an art to knowingwhen to end debate andmake a
decision.
Theres an art to knowing when to enddebate and make a decision.
Manyleaders are reluctant to make the nalcall when there are good
arguments anda lot of emotions on both sides. Weintuitively want
the team to come to theright decision on their own. But Ive
found that people are enormously relieved when they hear
thatyoure grabbing the baton and accepting responsibility for
adecision. Using the CEO prerogativeto make the nal
callisntsomething you ought to need every day. As long as you do
itsparingly, you can actually make your employees moreCOMFORTABLE ,
and engender more trust by pulling the trigger,logically explaining
your choice and sticking with it.In fact, gauging COMFORT on your
team is a really helpfulmeasure of whether youre going fast enough
or not.You KNOW
youre going fast enough if theres a low-level
discomfort, people feeling stretched. But if youre going too
fast,youll see it on their faces, and thats important to spot
too.While I was at Google, Larry Page was extremely good at
forcingdecisions so fast that people were worried the team was
about todrive the car off a cliff. Hed push it as far as he could
go
withouthttp://qz.com/465060/the-art-of-knowing-when-to-make-a-decision/
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A former Google exec on how to make tough decisions quickly -
Quartz
people crossing that line of discomfort. It was just his
fundamentalnature to ask, Why not? Why cant we do it faster than
this? andthen wait to see if people STARTED screaming. He really
ralliedeveryone around this theory that fast decisions, unless
theyrefatal, are always better.
Executing decisionsA lot of people spend a whole lot of time re
ning their productivitysystems and to-do lists. But within the
context of a team and abusiness, executing a PLAN as quickly as
possible is an entirelydifferent concept. Heres how Ive learned to
execute withmomentum.Challenge the whenIm always shocked by how
many plans and action items come outof meetings without being
assigned due dates. Even when dates areassigned, theyre often based
on half-baked intuition about howlong the task should take.
COMPLETION dates and times follow atribal notion of the sun setting
and rising, and too oftentomorrow is the default answer.Its not
that everything needs to be done NOW , but for items onyour
critical path, its always useful to challenge the due date. All
ittakes is asking the simplest QUESTION : Why cant this be
donesooner? Asking it methodically, reliably and habitually can
have aprofound impact on the speed of your organization.This is de
nitely a tactic that starts with
Today is better thantomorrow, right now isbetter than six hours
fromnow.
individual employees rstideally thosein senior positions who
canINFLUENCE others behavior. As aleader, you want them to make
things Ilike to do become things we like to do.This is how ideas
get ingrained. Ive seentoo many people never question when
something will be delivered and assumeit will happen
immediately. This rarely happens. Ive also seenideas oat into the
ether because they were never anchored intime.You dont have to be
militant about it, just consistently
RESPONDhttp://qz.com/465060/the-art-of-knowing-when-to-make-a-decision/
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1/8/2015
A former Google exec on how to make tough decisions quickly -
Quartz
that today is better than tomorrow, that right now is better
than sixhours from now.Theres a funny story about my old pal Sabih
Khan, who worked inoperations at Apple when I was a product manager
there. In 2008,he was meeting with Tim Cook about a production
snafu in China.Tim said, This is bad. Someone ought to get over
there. Thirtyminutes went by and the conversation moved to other
topics.Suddenly Tim looked back at Sabih and asked, Why are you
stillhere? Sabih left the meeting immediately, drove directly to
SanFrancisco Airport, got on the next ight to China without even
achange of clothes. But you can BETfast.
that problem was resolved
The candle is always burning. You NEED
leadership to feel and
infuse every discussion with that kind of urgency.Recognize and
remove dependenciesJust as important as assigning a deadline, you
need to tease out anydependencies around an action item. This might
be obvious, butmission critical items should be absolutely GANG
tackled by yourteam in order to accelerate all downstream
ACTIVITIES . Thingsthat can wait till later need to wait.
Ultimately, you cant have teammembers slow-rolling on non-vital
tasks when they could behacking away at the due date for something
that is make or break.A big part of this is making sure people
Mission critical itemsshould be absolutely gangtackled by your
team.
arent waiting on one another to takenext steps. The untrained
mind has aweird way of defaulting to serialACTIVITIES i.e. Ill do
this after youdo that after X, Y, Z happens. You wantpeople working
in parallel instead.
A lot of people assume DEPENDENCIES
where they dont even
exist.How can you turn serial dependencies into parallel action?
As aCEO, I insert myself at different points in a PROCESS
to radically
accelerate things. For example, if were coming up on
anannouncement and time is of the essence, I might jump in and
justwrite the blog post myself. Its not that my team couldnt do it.
Ihttp://qz.com/465060/the-art-of-knowing-when-to-make-a-decision/
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A former Google exec on how to make tough decisions quickly -
Quartz
just know it would be faster since Im the one whos picky about
thecontent anyway. As a leader, its your job to recognize
thedependencies and non-dependencies, and take action dependingon
how critical the thing is and when its due.Ten times a day Ill nd
myself sitting in a meeting saying, Wedont need to WAIT for that
thing, we can do this now. Thatthought is so common. Its just that
people need to say it out loudmore often.Eliminate cognitive
overheadRemember when you used to DOWNLOAD
lots of songs on
iTunes? It was so painfully slow if you wanted to buy a whole
albumat once. Youd have to wait for one to nish downloading so
theycould all speed up. Projects are like this. Sometimes a project
is socomplicated that it feels like youre downloading six albums at
onceso everything else grinds to a halt too.OUR PICKS
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I cant even count the number of meetings I had at Google
relatedto enterprise app identities versus NORMAL
consumer Google
IDs. We launched a project to x this, but it was so complicated
thatthe rst 30 minutes of every meeting were dedicated to
restatingwhat had happened in the last meeting. The cognitive
overheadwas mind boggling.This is how I learned that if you can
knock out big chunks of aproject early, you can reduce the overhead
of the remaining partsby 90%. You should always be on the lookout
for theseOPPORTUNITIES .Often, it will be one tiny element of a
project thats adding all ofthe complexity. For example, our
business at Upstart has to complywith a lot of regulations. Theres
not a lot we can do until we knowwell have legal APPROVAL , so we
used to spend a lot of timedancing around whether something was
going to be legal or not.Then we thought, why dont we just get a
brain dump from ourlawyers saying, Do this, this and this and not
this, and youll bene. Having that type of simple understanding of
the problemdrastically reduced the cognitive overhead of every
decision wemade.If you can assess, pull out, and stomp on the
complicating pieces
ofhttp://qz.com/465060/the-art-of-knowing-when-to-make-a-decision/
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A former Google exec on how to make tough decisions quickly -
Quartz
the puzzle, everyones life gets easier. The one I see the
mostandthis includes at Google toois that people hem and haw over
whatthe founder or CEO will think every step of the way. Just get
theirinput rst. Dont get your WORK reversed later on. What afounder
might think is classic cognitive overhead.
Use competition the right wayTalking about your competition is a
good way to add urgency. Butyou have to be careful. As a leader,
your role is to determinewhether your team is going fast because
theyre panicked, or if theydont seem to be paranoid enough. Based
on the ANSWER ,competition is a helpful tool.At Upstart, we
constantly say that while were working hard on thisone thing, our
competitors are probably working just as hard onsomething we dont
even know about. So we have to be vigilant. Alot of people say you
should ignore competition, but byacknowledging it, youre
incentivizing yourself to set the pace inyour MARKET .
You can either set the paceof theMARKET or be theone to
react.
You can either set the pace of theMARKET or be the one to
react.Whoever is fastest out of the gate is theone everyone else
has to react to.When we were launching Google Apps,
we were coming out against MicrosoftOf ce, which had this
dominant, monopolistic ownership of thebusiness. We thought about
what we could do differently andbetter, and the simplicity of our
pricing was part of it. We offeredone price of $50 per employee per
yearcompared to the wacky 20page price list Microsoft would drop on
you. We didnt agonize overwhether it should be $45, $50, or $55I
think we decided that in ahalf hour. We just wanted to be able to
tell people, We may not befree, but well be the simplest decision
you ever made. That was usre-setting the bar for the MARKET and
pushing it hard soeveryone else would have to react to it.Rally
support for decisionsAlmost nothing in tech can be done in a
vacuum. Basically, onceyouve made a decision, youll need to
convince others that
yourehttp://qz.com/465060/the-art-of-knowing-when-to-make-a-decision/
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A former Google exec on how to make tough decisions quickly -
Quartz
right and get them to PRIORITIZE
what you need from them over
the other things on their plate.INFLUENCING a decision starts
with recognizing that yourereally just dealing with other people.
Even if its a vendor oranother company you need to rally, it boils
down to one personrst. Given this view, you need to make a point of
understandingthis person, what their job is, how their success is
measured, whatthey care about, what all of their other priorities
are, etc. Then ask:How can you help them get what they want while
helping you getwhat you want?Ive seen this done by appealing to
peoples pride. Maybe you tellthem that you used to work with a
competitor who was quitespeedy so that they have incentive to go
even faster. Ive also seenthis done by appealing to human decency
and being honest. Youmight say something like, Hey were really
BETTING heavily onthis, and we really need you guys to
deliver.Whichever route you CHOOSE , you want to back up
yourargument with logic. You should gently seek to understand
whatshappening. I tend to ask a lot of questions like: Can you help
meunderstand why something would take so long? Is there any waywe
can help or MAKE it go faster? Really try to get to the heartof the
actions theyre taking and the time theyve carved out to doit. And
if this works, be sure to commend them to their boss.I highly
recommend this over a brute
How can you make otherpeopleLOOK good?
force method of escalating things to thepersons MANAGER or
throwingcompetition in their face. That doesntserve them, and
theyll be much lesslikely to serve you as a result.
How can you make other people look good? How can you makemeeting
your needs a win for them inside their company?All of this comes
back to making things go as fast and smoothly aspossible. When you
feel things START
to slow down, you have to
keep asking questions. Questions are your best weapon
againstinertia.To keep things moving along at Upstart, I ask a lot
of
hardhttp://qz.com/465060/the-art-of-knowing-when-to-make-a-decision/
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A former Google exec on how to make tough decisions quickly -
Quartz
questions very quickly, and most of them are time related. I
knowthat we execute well and are generally WORKING
on the right
things at the right time, but I will always challenge why
somethingtakes a certain amount of time. Are we working as smartly
as we
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can?Too many people believe that speed is the enemy of quality.
To anextent theyre rightyou cant force INNOVATION
and
Today is a blue moon: What doesthat really mean, anyway?
sometimes genius needs time and freedom to bloom. But in
myexperience, thats the rare case. Theres not always a stark
tradeoff
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organization use that as a false shield or excuse to lose
momentum.
between something done fast and done well. Dont let you or
your
BY TELSTRA
The moment you do, you lose your competitive advantage.
Working remotely no longermeans being distant
This post ORIGINALLY
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