Leadership without authority is fun, isn’t it? 

One of the things that often comes up in the CPO Bootcamp and also in my strategic consulting services is how to pass the decision you want to pass, while you don’t necessarily get to make the call.

Many of my consulting services customers are CPOs that are also the co-founders of their startup. You might think that this does the trick and gives you all the authority that you need. Well, think again. They, too, struggle with passing the decision they aim for. 

So why is it so hard, and what can you do about it? To start understanding, let’s look into our end goal.

You Want the Decision Accepted, Not Enforced

Generally speaking, and primarily on decisions that have strategic importance, you don’t really want to enforce your decision on people who disagree. Think about it, if you had a magic wand that would make everyone relevant adhere without a fight, would you use it? I’m guessing that in most cases the answer would be ‘no’.

There are two primary reasons for that: first, the people that you are trying to convince would most likely need to act according to the decision you are passing. If they simply adhere without fully understanding why this is the right call and what you are trying to do here, they will fail to deliver even if they truly disagree and commit.

Second, in big decisions, you want to make sure you are not missing anything. We all have blind spots, and the more complex the decision is, the more likely we overlooked something. The discussions with your colleagues and stakeholders can be considered review sessions to help you increase your confidence and to come up with a better decision eventually. 

I used this technique early on in my career when I was one of the system architects of the next-generation command and control system of the Israeli Air Force. We wrote a document for each module that we planned and reviewed it repeatedly with the other team members until all comments from everyone were addressed. That was our way to make sure the outcome is a much more robust design, that was well thought of and took everything into account.

So we have established that you want to actually convince others that the decision you are trying to push towards is the right one. That means you would need to do actual convincing work. Don’t feel underestimated if you need to thoroughly explain your thought process and considerations – that’s actually what you want to do if you agree with the end goal I stated above.

To Have an Honest Discussion, Be Willing to Lose

The next level of decision integrity arrives when you are not only having the discussion but actually having it with no agenda of yours. After all, what is a better way to prove that you are right than having the group come up with the conclusion that you wanted in the first place, without you leading them there?

While this is often unrealistic, here is a simple alternative that works: lead the discussion, but treat the decision you want to lead to as merely a suggestion. One alternative out of many valid ones, and even more importantly – a raw material that is still malleable and not a final cut. 

This will make sure you are open to other opinions as well, and truly consider the comments others make. The entire discussion will get a different vibe because if you allow others to participate in leading the direction (AKA the final decision), it becomes a common creation and not a decision between contradicting directions that the participants might have.

Not only is it easier and quicker to get to a decision this way, but the outcome is actually a better decision since more aspects were taken into consideration throughout the process.

By the way, if you look at the word ‘decide’ itself, it comes from a family of interesting words like ‘suicide’, ‘homicide’, and ‘genocide’. In a way, to decide means to kill the alternative. Looking at it this way, it’s no wonder that decision-making is a painful process in many organizations because in every decision there is a winner and a loser. The technique I suggested above changes the nature of the decision-making process and turns it into a collaborative creation process instead. No winning or losing, nothing gets killed along the way.

Focus on Specific Decisions Instead of Principles

Some of the decisions we need to make truly are concerning the deep principles of our product and strategy. But these are very rare cases. 99.9% of the million decisions we need to make day in and day out are on very concrete and specific matters: what should we do this next sprint? Which design do we prefer? What is the right goal for the quarter?

Now, don’t get me wrong – often these decisions are very easy when the principles are clear. But in most cases, you don’t stop to discuss principles in advance, and so you run into the principles out of casual decisions you need to make.

For example, when deciding on the goal for the quarter, what do we put first – monetization or growing our user base? If we have agreed on this before, it’s easy. But if – as it usually happens – we never stopped to think about it properly, the goal discussion becomes a principle discussion.

To make it a productive one, you first and foremost need to understand which type of discussion you are having: is it one of that 0.01% where you truly need to stop and think and agree about the principle? Or is it a specific decision that can be either the rule or the exception, and so you don’t have to agree on the rule first?

My recommendation is to always try to agree on the principle first. But if you are getting into a rabbit hole and can’t agree, ask yourself what is the actual decision that you need to make here. Sometimes, it doesn’t matter what the rule is, the decision stays the same.

This is true, by the way, for other areas in your life as well. For example, my husband and I have different views on how much screen time we should allow our daughters. We often disagree on the principles. But when a specific decision needs to be made, it is often easy for us to agree on it. For example, while I am generally more restrictive on screen time, maybe tomorrow is a holiday and I’m fine with making an exception, which just happens to be aligned with my husband’s general principle for the topic. Or vice versa, when it comes to our oldest daughter who loves screens more than life itself, my husband who is generally less fond of limited screen time agrees that this is the right decision in this case.

Willingness to either align with your guiding principles or make an exception for a specific decision gives you the additional flexibility that can make the difference between endless loophole discussions and quick decisions that allow you to focus on what’s truly important – making progress accordingly.