As our decision-making scales, it also has consequences that ripple. I find it incredibly disheartening when I have done a lot of work, and then a decision gets made that means none of that work is used. Scale also means disconnection between where the work is done, and where the consequences are felt. If the decision maker is doing the work, they can be doing constant triage on marginal effort. Once outsourced, if the work goes done a different path, you need to wait till check-in points to find that out.
Outsourcing work without outsourcing decision-making requires very clear questions. For anything to actually happen, late-stage decision-making often involves closing down options. Accepting constraints and shipping. Making choices in the face of ambiguity. Reducing the number of things that will make you change your mind. In a world of practical decisions, you can never make the perfect choice. There are always trade-offs.
“An ounce of practice beats a ton of theory” requires loops of action and consequence. Consequence that can be felt in a reality that is complex, ambiguous, and uncertain. We have to engage with the world. Learning to build consensus is how the interconnected scale works. Unstated rules that allow us to go deeper, but when those rules break... require engaging in difficult unlearning and relearning.
There are very few areas where we can be the only decision maker. Where it doesn’t matter what other people think. In most cases, we are forced to engage in the messy process of joint decision-making. That requires skills like social, cultural, and emotional intelligence and an awareness of, and interest in, other people’s stories. It requires acknowledging the challenge we face by only being able to judge from our context, and our need to expand our context to see and resee.
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