It Doesn't Have to Be Crazy at Work

Commitment, Not Consensus The gold standard for legal deliberations is a unanimous verdict by a jury of peers. When the stakes of justice are at their highest, consensus is the only thing that’ll do. Anything less and it’s a do-over. That’s a wonderful ideal for a criminal court, but it’s a terrible practice to mimic in business. If you only have to make a single decision, and it might literally be life or death, then that’s a burden worth bearing. But in business, you may have to make multiple major decisions monthly. If every one of them has to be made by consensus, you’re in for an endless grind with significant collateral damage. The cost of consensus is simply too much to pay over and over again. When you get a bunch of people in a room under the assumption that consensus is the only way out again, you’re in for a war of attrition. Whoever can keep arguing the longest stands the best chance of winning. That’s just silly. So what to do instead? It’s not like good decisions just spring into the mind of a single individual. They’re always going to be the product of consultation, evidence, arguments, and debate. But the only sustainable method in business is to have them made by individuals. Someone in charge has to make the final call, even if others would prefer a different decision. Good decisions don’t so much need consensus as they need commitment. Jeff Bezos put it well in his 2017 letter to shareholders: I disagree and commit all the time. We recently greenlit a particular Amazon Studios original. I told the team my view: debatable whether it would be interesting enough, complicated to produce, the business terms aren’t that good, and we have lots of other opportunities. They had a completely different opinion and wanted to go ahead. I wrote back right away with “I disagree and commit and hope it becomes the most watched thing we’ve ever made.” Consider how much slower this decision cycle would have been if the team had actually had to convince me rather than simply get my commitment. We totally agree. We’ve been practicing disagree and commit since the beginning, but it took Bezos’s letter to name the practice. Now we even use that exact term in our discussions. “I disagree, but let’s commit” is something you’ll hear at Basecamp after heated debates about specific products or strategy decisions. Companies waste an enormous amount of time and energy trying to convince everyone to agree before moving forward on something. What they’ll often get is reluctant acceptance that masks secret resentment. Instead, they should allow everyone to be heard and then turn the decision over to one person to make the final call. It’s their job to listen, consider, contemplate, and decide. Calm companies get this. Everyone’s invited to pitch their ideas, make their case, and have their say, but then the decision is left to someone else. As long as people are truly heard and it’s repeatedly demonstrated that their voice matters, those who shared will understand that even if things don’t fall their way this time. Last thing: What’s especially important in disagree-and-commit situations is that the final decision should be explained clearly to everyone involved. It’s not just decide and go, it’s decide, explain, and go.