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I recently became DRI (directly responsible individual) on a decision that's a big one. Being wrong on this can cost real time and trust, and it reaches people well beyond my direct team. I've said before that one of my growth areas is making decisions under pressure without full conviction on the direction. This week is putting that to the test. I’m leaving for a vacation in a couple of days, and by mid-next week, I’ll be on medical leave. Somewhere in between, this decision has to be made public.
In a perfect world, I'd take my time. I’d map out every stakeholder and identify the ones I haven't talked to yet. I’d figure out who's affected by this decision, directly and indirectly. I’d schedule a run of discovery calls, gather everything I could, and get a gut check from a few people I trust before any of it goes public.
Normally, I’d defend that instinct without thinking twice. Wanting more information before making a consequential call is usually good judgment, but that approach assumes something I don’t have this week: runway. I have about four working days.
Exposure therapy seems to work well for me, so here we go!
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So I turned each part of my ideal process into a question and started brain dumping into a document.
What do I already know? I wrote this down first. I’ve been involved in the decision-making process, but I haven’t been the DRI until now. So this isn't a totally new problem. There was plenty of information sitting in Slack threads and docs, so I used AI to grab this information for me, summarize it, and add it to my doc.
Who are my stakeholders, and who haven't I talked to yet? I can't get to everyone, so I picked the handful of people who will actually move my thinking. I gut-checked my assumptions on stakeholders by asking who they would recommend talking to. I wouldn’t necessarily get to all of them, but they helped me answer the next question…
Who's affected, both directly and indirectly? I’ve been at Zapier for a little over a year, and while I’ve definitely used that time to meet as many people as possible, the reality is I won’t ever have the same context as someone who’s been at the company for 5+ years. I have a good understanding of who’s affected directly, but early research helped me identify a few other teams that would’ve totally slipped off my radar had I not used my network.
And the one most important question: Who can help me make this decision? If a decision is that broad-sweeping, someone else can absolutely help you reach your decision. I asked a colleague to set up a call with a stakeholder they already work with regularly, so I could skip the first-meeting “nice to meet you” entirely. Building that relationship myself can happen another time.
This process still left me with more unknowns than I could resolve. The important distinction was which unknowns could actually change the decision, and which would only make me feel more comfortable making it.
Based on my discovery, I set up some decision gates. I know I can’t know everything about this decision, but there are absolutely going to be some gates that could be inconvenient or even expose us to real risk if I don’t get a direct answer ahead of time, primarily around compliance.
Decision gates specify what must be true for a decision to be a yes. I limit my gates to must-haves; nice-to-haves are not my priority for this purpose. I treated something as a must-have only if the answer could change the decision or reveal a risk we couldn’t reasonably accept. I’ll also outline what a failure mode might look like, and then identify who’s best suited to answer this gate. That’s a stakeholder I have to get an answer from.
The above graphic is an example of how I’d complete this decision gates table (with hypothetical data). I find it best to keep to no more than 2-4 gates. If your list is getting long, take a good look at what actually might be a nice-to-have and cut down on the decisions. If you really can’t cut down on your decision gates and your gates have a lot of no-go signals, that can be a sign in itself that the decision is too risky.
So that's where I am as this goes out. Each conversation is bringing me closer to my decision and challenging the assumptions I’ve made along the way. That's exactly why I sought these people out: each of them is speaking from their own corner of the problem. Weighing what they bring is my job, and making the call is still mine alone. I'll let you know how it goes.