One-Way and Two-Way Doors

When it comes to making decisions, tons of factors come into play. What are your options? How much time do you have? What are the consequences? What are the consequences of the consequences? But one of the most important factors to consider is this: Is your decision reversible?

Jeff Bezos outlined a decision-making framework for irreversible and reversible decisions in the 2015 Amazon shareholder letter, calling them one-way and two-way doors respectively.

"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. We can call these Type 1 decisions. 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. Type 2 decisions can and should be made quickly by high judgment individuals or small groups."

Using this as a framework for aiding decision-making is highly effective. By identifying one-way and two-way door decisions, you are eliminating a one-size-fits-all model while keeping things simple and pragmatic.

Transforming Doors

One-way door decisions are riskier than two-way door decisions. Once the decision has been made, there is no turning back. But what if you could mitigate the risk of one-way doors?

Negotiation is a vital tool when it comes to reducing your risk. People and organizations will put constraints on you throughout the course of business and life. These range from payment schedules to return policies, consulting fees to travel budgets, and so on. These constraints often look to be permanent, but when you look beyond the facade and start to negotiate, you find that the constraints are flexible. And many times that means a one-way door becomes a two-way door. Or at least it partially can.

Chris Voss talks about this strategy in his book Never Split the Difference about how it’s done in hostage negotiations. Oftentimes, captors kidnap someone and rapidly seek ransom by threatening to kill their hostages. That’s a one-way door if there ever was one, right?

Maybe not. Perhaps the captors use these tactics to create a sense of urgency and compliance. But those tactics can be reversed and used against the captors themselves, which turns a one-way door into a two-way door.

"Once you understand that subterranean world of unspoken needs and thoughts, you’ll discover a universe of variables that can be leveraged to change your counterpart’s needs and expectations. From using some people’s fear of deadlines and mysterious power of odd numbers, to our misunderstood relationship to fairness, there are always ways to bend our counterpart’s reality so it conforms to what we ultimately want to give them, not to what they initially think they deserve."

Richard Branson transformed one-way doors into two-way doors all the time while growing Virgin. For instance, when he pushed into the airline industry with Virgin Atlantic, he realized the highest risk resided in owning the planes; if the company didn’t take off, they’d be stuck with this big, expensive piece of equipment. So he made a deal with Boeing to lease the plane. This wasn’t novel in itself–planes were often leased to varying degrees–but the duration of the lease was. Branson limited the lease to one year. If Virgin Atlantic didn’t make progress after the first year, Branson would wrap it up and return the plane.

". . . I made a deal with Boeing that we could hand the plane back in a year’s time if the airline didn’t get off the ground. Thankfully, we never had to. But if things hadn’t worked out, I could have walked back through the door."

Organizational Decision-Making

In the past, organizations of all types (governments, military, businesses, sports teams, etc.) operated with a command-and-control style with a centralized source of power directing the rest of the organization on what to do. In these cases, organizations were slow to react. Bureaucracy and lethargy reigned. And because the decision-makers were removed from the situations they made decisions for, they often lacked the information and empathy to make effective decisions. The decision-makers in a command-and-control modality lack skin in the outcome of their decisions.

Organizations realized that the command-and-control style was ineffective over the long term and have since shifted to varying degrees of decentralized command. The one-way and two-way doors decision-making framework has helped.

Two-way door decisions should be pushed to the teams who are best equipped to make those decisions. This usually means the team on the front line who has the best information, is the most exposed to the consequences of the decision, and is quickest to make the decision. Because the decision is reversible, the team making that decision can change the decision after the fact if the outcome isn’t as intended. The risk profile of two-way door decisions is fairly low.

One-way door decisions are not necessarily kept by senior management but instead shared throughout the organization to ensure enough information is gathered and perspectives ascertained to reduce negative outcomes. The ultimate responsible party is likely a management team, but the key is that they do not make a decision isolated from the rest of the organization.

Conclusion

Decision frameworks take many forms, but one that is helpful in evaluating the speed and severity of a decision is the one-way or two-way door framework. This framework asks a simple question: is my decision reversible? If it is, then proceed with speed and accomplish much. If you don’t like the decision after it has been made, then simply undo it. It is, after all, reversible.

If the decision is irreversible, then slow down and seek more information and more consultation. Deliberate with others about the decision to ascertain multiple perspectives. Identify potential consequences that may arise and troubleshoot how you could solve them, lessen their impact, or head them off altogether.

For a decision that’s irreversible, ask yourself: is it entirely so? Endeavor to find ways to transform parts of the decision from irreversible to reversible and you will lower the risk profile and simplify the decision itself.

When it comes to organizational management, identifying one-way and two-way doors is crucial to the performance of the organization. The idea that power needs to shift from a centralized source outward to the people and teams who deal with the consequences of decisions is necessary to improve organizational performance. But how exactly to do that has confounded many organizations. This is where the usefulness of the one-way and two-way door framework comes into play. Decisions that are two-way doors can be pushed out to the front-line teams who are able to make them effectively and quickly. One-way door decisions are then left to be methodically tackled with input from everyone.