Ep 224 | Two-Way Door Decision Making

Thank you for joining me today. It's Brian Gubernick, and welcome to the No Days Off podcast, where we believe that every single day brings a new opportunity to get better. Let's get into it. Today I want to talk about decision-making, how to make better decisions, make faster decisions, and we're gonna turn to a guy that's made a few right decisions in his life. His name is Jeff Bezos. You may be familiar with Jeff, the founder of Amazon, amazing business leader for that company for, for quite a long time, and has an amazing story, of course, that I'm sure most of you probably know tidbits of. Jeff has a rule, he calls it his two-way door rule, that he leverages, or he's leveraged over the years to make better decisions. He's also taught this framework to everybody within Amazon. And as a matter of fact, he threw a description of this framework that I'm going to read to you here in a bit into his 1997 shareholder letter to Amazon shareholders. This two-way door concept is a rule, right, that emotionally intelligent individuals will use to strip away emotional clutter and build what Jeff would call a bias toward action. Okay. So now let's just, just, just imagine with me here, right? You need to make a decision. We've all made, you know, have to make decisions and sometimes they're major decisions. In this particular example, let's say it's a life-changing decision. You weigh the pros and cons, you get advice, you analyze, you agonize because you don't want to make the wrong decision. You need to get this thing right. However, you may never actually make a decision. Maybe you're paralyzed, or maybe you do make a decision, but it's timid, it's half-hearted, it's uncommitted. And as a result, the decision, you know, that's being made does not have the success that maybe you thought it, it would. That's the problem with decisions. The stakes always seem high. You always run the loss of time or the loss of money or the loss of ego, or maybe the loss of self-esteem, because it sucks if things go wrong. If this sounds familiar, this rule might apply to you. So the two-way door rule. Let's, let's start by describing what I mean by two-way door. Two-way door decisions are decisions that are in fact reversible. 'Cause the door swings in two ways. For example, hiring a new employee, make the wrong hire. Okay. Yeah. It took some time, maybe a couple bucks, but you can reverse that. Or maybe starting a new business. Yeah. It might take time and it's a little stress, but if it doesn't work, okay, we can reverse that. Maybe it's providing a new service or creating a new price model. Two-way door decisions can seem like life and death, especially before you're making them when you have little time and effort, but they can always be tweaked or modified or even reversed. These are called type 2 decisions according to Bezos. Now, a one-way door decision are those decisions that are almost impossible to reverse because the door only swings one way, like firing an employee. You're not getting that person back. Or selling your business. Once it's sold, that ship has sailed. Or maybe it's ending a vendor relationship. Generally speaking, once you make a one-way door decision, there's no going back. These are Type 1 decisions. Now, Bezos wrote about this in his 1997 shareholder letter. He said, and I'm going to quote, some decisions are consequential and irreversible or nearly irreversible, one-way doors. And these decisions must be made methodically, carefully, slowly, with great deliberation and consultation. If you walk through and don't like what you see on the other side, you can't get back to where you were before. But most decisions aren't like that. They are changeable. Reversible. They're two-way doors. If you've made a suboptimal Type 2 decision, you don't have to live with the consequences for that long. You can reopen the door and go back through. Now I'm through that quote. According to Bezos, as organizations tend to apply this one-way door rule to more and more decisions, it typically happens because they're growing. As organizations, organizations grow and things seem to get more complex and every decision seems to be mission critical. The one-way door rule seems to get applied to more and more decisions. This happens to us as individuals too. The more responsibilities we have, the more goals we set, the more complicated our life becomes, the more we look at every decision as mission critical. But here's the reality. Most decisions are not one-way door decisions. They're not Type 1 decisions. They're actually Type 2. So how do you apply this two-way door rule? You gotta understand that not all decisions are created equal. Some actually require deep thought. Other decisions, less, you know, less weighty choices just demand speed, and basic competence. So the next time you're struggling to make a decision— and you're going to struggle to make a decision today, tomorrow, this week, you know, we all go through this— next time you're struggling to make a decision, take a step back and make a more basic decision. Here's the decision you need to make: are you turning a two-way door decision into a one-way door decision? Is this really something that, man, if it doesn't go right, I could just reverse course and I lose a little time and maybe I'm a little frustrated, but I can reverse it? Or is it truly a one-way door decision? Now you're going to get some two-way door decisions wrong, but that's okay. That's the whole point here. Just trust that you'll figure out how to react. And respond and know that you'll come out on the other side a little bit more skilled and a little bit more experienced. As Bezos would tell you, you just have to get good at quickly recognizing and correcting bad decisions. And that starts with recognizing the difference between one-way door and two-way door decisions. Because when you do recognize the difference between one-way door and two-way door decisions, you will move far quicker, and you'll actually make a lot more decisions. You follow me? So in summary, we treat so many things— we're all guilty of this— we treat it as though it's irreversible. And as a result, we agonize and we spend time and we analyze and we analyze. But the reality is, if you don't go down the right path, you could quickly pivot. It's rare that, that, that a one-way door decision shows up. It is common that, that it's a two-way door decision. So that's the analysis for you. So the focusing question today, what decisions are you contemplating right now? Are you going deep in your analysis because you think it's mission critical? Are you worried about making a mistake? If so, what if you just chose the path that made the most sense right now, knowing that you can in fact walk it back? Again, remember, I'll give you the example— hiring somebody. Of course you don't want to make a bad hire, but if you're close, maybe it's worth just swinging and knowing that you could walk it back. Because unlike firing somebody, that sort of thing's reversible. You follow me? So focusing question: where do you need to apply this two-way door thought process, this decision-making process, so that you stop agonizing and get more speed to your decision-making? And as a result, making more decisions each and every day that matter. That's all I have for you today. The No Days Off Podcast. Thank you so much for listening. And remember, every single day brings a new opportunity to get better. So let's get after it.