Program Overview
Course Structure
- Week 1-2: Decision-making frameworks including consensus, consultative, and delegated models
- Week 3: Handling incomplete information and time pressure without paralysis
- Week 4: Building reversibility into decisions and creating feedback loops
- Week 5: Navigating disagreements about priorities and values within teams
- Week 6-7: Documentation approaches that people actually use and reference later
- Week 8: Learning from decisions that went wrong without creating blame culture
Group work requirements
You will work with a consistent small group throughout the program to practice frameworks on real decisions. Groups are 4-5 people and meet twice per week for 60 minutes.
Detailed Information
Complex problems do not have clean solutions. There are tradeoffs, incomplete information, and legitimate disagreements about what matters most. This program focuses on making defensible decisions as a team when you cannot make everyone happy.
You will learn multiple decision-making frameworks and when to use each one. Some situations need consensus, others need consultative approaches, and some require someone to just decide. Knowing which framework fits which situation prevents a lot of spinning.
What makes this different
We spend significant time on how to handle decisions that go wrong. Because they will. You will learn how to build in reversibility, how to recognize when to cut losses, and how to extract learning without blame when a decision does not pan out.
The program also covers decision documentation. Not formal decision logs that no one maintains, but lightweight ways to capture why you decided something so you can learn from it later and avoid rehashing the same arguments.
Real examples throughout
Every framework is taught through case studies from technology companies, nonprofits, and product teams. You will see the decision-making process, the framework they used, what worked, and what they would change. These are not sanitized success stories but honest accounts that include the messy parts.