Amazon separates decisions into one-way doors (hard to undo, like building a data centre) and two-way doors (reversible, like testing a website feature). Leaders should delegate two-way doors to employees with 70% of the information they'd want, since failure costs little. Employees allowed this autonomy are 177% more engaged.
Most decisions at your company are reversible, so stop making them all yourself. Amazon sorts decisions into one-way doors and two-way doors. A one-way door is hard to undo, like a data center. Those deserve careful analysis. A two-way door is reversible, like testing a new feature on the website. If it flops, you just walk back through the door. Most decisions are two-way doors. Let your employees make those with about 70% of the information they wish they had because the cost of failure is low. Ken Hicks, the CEO of Academy Sports, told me, a leader has to be willing to get criticized for something their people did. You might have made a different decision, but they'll own their decision and they'll make it work. In our research, employees who get to learn and develop like this are 177% more engaged. So guard the one-way door decisions that are hard to walk back through, but get out of the way of the rest.
