If you asked me the number one “topic” people come to me about, I would say communication. That's the specific word cited most often.
When I ask more questions, what gets shared ranges from trust to transparency, from inclusivity to managerial effectiveness. But when we finally land on the actual thing, 99% of the time, the real topic is decision making.
Absolutely. I’m keeping your voice and structure, but tightening the repetition, giving the opening insight more room, making the “right-sized process” point explicit, swapping in the stronger criteria language, and bringing the ending down to earth.
“We need better communication” can mean:
I don't know who is allowed to decide.
I don't understand why that person gets to decide.
I thought I was being consulted, but apparently the decision had already been made.
I gave input and don't know what happened to it.
My manager can't explain the rationale.
Different leaders are giving us different explanations.
Nobody will tell us whether the conversation is still open or closed.
Those experiences get reported as communication problems. But better newsletters, town halls, talking points, manager toolkits, or Slack messages won't fix them.
The communication is downstream of the decision making.
Who has authority to make decisions? Why? How are decisions made? How do we know when a decision has been made? Do we have a say? How can we influence decisions, particularly those that affect us? And on and on.
So this is the first in a series on decision making. I don't know how long the series will be. Who knows? It may turn into a book.
It's a big topic, and deeply consequential to organizational culture, effectiveness, capacity, and strategy.
Let's dive in with the first question: How do we actually make good decisions — together, in a way we can stand behind later?
The answer starts somewhere most teams skip.
You decide how you'll decide, before you decide anything at all.
And the “how” should fit the decision. Choosing what to order from DoorDash for lunch needs almost no process — someone picks, everyone eats. Choosing the vendor for a major renovation needs a great deal of it. Same act, wildly different weight.
The goal isn't more process. It's the right amount of process for the weight of the decision.
When you match the process to the stakes before you dive into the choice itself, you change the outcome entirely. That step in front of the step — the meta-process — is where good decisions are won or lost.
Here is the shape of a sound one. Four moves, in order:
Notice that communication isn't the cleanup operation at the end. It's part of the decision process itself.
But most of the trouble lives in step three. So let's stay there.
Decision criteria are an agreement — the short list of standards every option gets measured against. Set them deliberately, and in advance, and the decision becomes defensible, repeatable, and shared. Leave them implicit, and something else decides for you: the loudest voice in the room, the newest worry, or simply the most polished case.
Here is the principle underneath it:
You cannot choose well until you have agreed what “well” means.
Criteria fixed before you weigh the options do something quietly powerful — they keep the decision from being reverse-engineered to someone's favorite. The standards come first. The options are measured against them.
And later, when someone who wasn't in the room asks “On what basis?”, you have an answer.
Because someone will ask.
A colleague. Leadership. A board of trustees. Customers. Partners. People affected by the decision who had no role in making it.
A team that can answer with the same clear criteria, in the same words, speaks with one voice. A team that can't may look like it chose by preference instead of principle — even when it didn't.
Which brings me to the discipline that makes criteria real: define your terms.
The most dangerous words in any decision conversation are the ones everyone nods along to.
Sustainable. Relevant. Mission-aligned.
They feel like agreement. They can hide completely different meanings. Everyone leaves the meeting sure they agreed, and discovers three weeks later that they didn't.
A criterion isn't useful until it is defined well enough that two people looking at the same option know exactly what they're judging it against.
Watch the difference:
Too vague to use: “We should choose the most sustainable model.”
Rigorous enough to judge: “Sustainable means it can be staffed and funded at realistic levels for five to ten years, without relying on chronic vacancies or heroics.”
The first is a feeling.
The second is a ruler.
So before your next decision that matters — the renovation, not the lunch order — try the move that front-loads all of it.
Agree what “well” means.
Write the criteria down.
Define them well enough that everyone knows what they're judging against.
And do it before you look at a single option.
Before you decide, decide how you'll decide.
It sounds like one extra step. In practice, it can save you dozens of them.
Decisively,
- DeEtta
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