
A former Google exec on how to make tough decisions quickly - mayop100
http://qz.com/465060/the-art-of-knowing-when-to-make-a-decision/
======
EliRivers
Former discussion here

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9953526](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9953526)

and

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9923239](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9923239)

The general HN feeling on those occasions, broadly speaking, was that this is
ridiculous.

------
dingaling
One of my best managers had the default response of 'no' to any unexpected
questions with unrealistic deadlines. Nothing flowery, just "no my team is not
available to do that."

Usually worked well ( except when C-levels were invoked to over-ride ) and
saved us from a lot of half-arsed unplanned work at silly hours. And all the
post facto refactoring that would involve.

Her mindset was that positive answers could only be made when there had been
sufficient internal discussion with all the facts present.

~~~
GauntletWizard
The phrase I heard tossed around is "Your poor planning is not my emergency".
It could probably be more nicely worded.

~~~
snorkel
That stance can also backfire in the form of "OK you're too busy to help me so
I'll hire outside contractors to do it instead." which leads to a bigger mess
to sort out later. I try to at least offer a partial solution.

~~~
shostack
Not just that, but it creates a true "us vs. them" mentality in an
organization where you're all on the same team.

I've found in my career that there are very few people who want things done on
extremely short notice with short deadlines for shits and giggles. Most of the
time they are responding to some external (or higher level internal) pressure.
Even if it is due to less than ideal planning, they are typically aware that
they are asking a lot.

Of course, that is in reasonable work environments.

------
aaronbrethorst

        Suddenly Tim looked back at Sabih and asked,
        ‘Why are you still here?’ Sabih left the
        meeting immediately, drove directly to San
        Francisco Airport, got on the next flight
        to China without even a change of clothes.
        But you can bet that problem was resolved
        fast.
    

What about Sabih's passport? Did he just carry it around at all times in case
Tim Cook wanted him to fly to China?

~~~
drzaiusapelord
Not to mention his Visa. U.S. citizens must get visas before visiting. They
can't just buy one after landing.

So much of this sounds like managerial bullshit, to be honest. "He got on the
plane straight to China and made it work like the Ayn Rand superman he truly
is! You skill workers can learn a lot from this!"

~~~
kbenson
Maybe you can get a visa that covers a time period instead of a trip? If he's
the guy that regularly goes out there once every week or two, and that's a
possibe to get a visa like that, I imagine they would. Otherwise, maybe his
assistant was frantically greasing the wheels for his arrival while he was on
the plan.

Beyond that, the story read to me less like "a funny story about my old pal
Sabih Khan" and more like "here's how much of a dick Tim Cook is". If you
think saying “This is bad. Someone ought to get over there.” in the middle of
a meeting and then later in that same meeting, feel compelled to single out a
specific person and ask "Why are you still here?", then _you are a dick_.
Being purposefully vague on the who and the when to then thirty minutes later
single someone out for not doing something is a dick move.

~~~
scintill76
It does sound dickish, but we're missing tone, body language, context, etc.
It's possible those added up to something that could more accurately be
transcribed as, "Why did I allow you to stay here when I just said we needed
someone there? OK, go now!"

On the other hand, there's this alternate quote: 'Thirty-minutes in the
meeting he chided Sabih Khan, the then operations executive, saying "Why are
you still here?"' [1] But, the actual source is "an anecdote reported by CNN",
which might be this quote: 'Thirty minutes into that meeting Cook looked at
Sabih Khan, a key operations executive, and abruptly asked, without a trace of
emotion, "Why are you still here?"' [2] So, was it emotionless or chiding?
Merely abrupt or rebuking? I'm interested in this because it's a case study of
problems with (modern?) journalism, where one journo gets an actual quote,
boils it down to a paragraph, then everyone else has to mince that up into
something interesting and not plagiarised, which continues ad nauseum (in this
case becoming a legendary story about an exec, inviting embellishments) until
hardly anything of the true meaning is left. I kinda wish the people who have
no more actual information than an intelligent search-engine-user would get
out of the way so the rest of us could just read the primary source.

[1] [http://s4.ibtimes.com/tim-cook-man-apple-ceo-steve-jobs-
trus...](http://s4.ibtimes.com/tim-cook-man-apple-ceo-steve-jobs-
trusts-256039) [2]
[https://web.archive.org/web/20081206032107/http://money.cnn....](https://web.archive.org/web/20081206032107/http://money.cnn.com/2008/11/09/technology/cook_apple.fortune/index.htm)

~~~
kbenson
Those could very well be valid interpretations of the situation. If the story
is supposed to be funny, it was delivered poorly, which may be due to the
other problem you mentioned. For all we know there could be Citogenesis[1]
going on at some level.

1: [https://xkcd.com/978/](https://xkcd.com/978/)

------
mrslx
Different google than the one i worked in, it took managers many quarters or
even years to make big decisions. they needed tons of data and trends - by
nature they are reactive to a fault. yet they run around talking about quick
decisions making and being agile.. strange world it was.

~~~
BurningFrog
There are many different Googles.

------
basseq
Frankly, I think the tactical HOW part of this article is very light. There's
much content on WHY it's a good idea and apocryphal anecdotes. Here's some
actual advice I gleaned from the article:

\- Say, "We’re going to make this decision before we leave the room." (And do
it.)

\- Begin every decision-making process by considering how much time and effort
that decision is worth, who needs to have input, and __when you’ll have an
answer __.

\- Internalize how irreversible, fatal, or non-fatal a decision may be. (And
get comfortable with it.)

\- Give important decisions 24 hours, even if you think you know the answer.

\- Know when to end debate and make a decision. Use your "CEO prerogative"
sparingly but decisively.

\- Gauge comfort to get to the right speed: low-level discomfort (stretching)
is good.

Then execute on those decisions. (This is the second half of the article.)

------
logicallee
This is how you make decisions quickly: "Fuckit, youtube is the biggest video
site, gmail is the biggest mail server, and people have accounts on there!
What's Facebook got that we don't! From now on errybody gets a Google+
account. Want to post on YouTube - bam, there's your real name. Do you have a
gmail? Now you have Google+. Let's see Facebook compete with that! That's it,
decision made. Go!"

I think on the surface this kind of a decision is a fantastic quick, touch
decision, and one that fast-moving, risk-taking, companies can quickly try and
implement. Unfortunately for Google, sometimes making tough decisions quickly
is the wrong kind of quick.

~~~
dageshi
In the end it didn't cost them anything though did it? They gave it a decent
shot and ultimately perhaps the only other decision to take was not to try and
make a social network at all.

~~~
withdavidli
There's always a cost. Time, effort, losing people that didn't want everything
to be connected, exposing privacy (remembered that people weren't aware when
G+ names were replacing youtube ones and exposed their comments).

------
dandrews
Originally published here:

[http://firstround.com/review/speed-as-a-
habit/](http://firstround.com/review/speed-as-a-habit/)

------
cek
I loved this post. It makes a ton of great points, that resonate based on my
experience. One of my favorite sayings is "90% of the decisions you make don't
matter. For those, just pick. For the 10% use diligence."

------
incepted
> A good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan next week.

Er... what? In what world is this a universal truth?

~~~
exelius
In a world where situations are constantly changing. A good plan now can help
make progress, while next week you'd still be debating what changes to make to
the plan in light of new developments.

Another version of this quote often attributed to Eisenhower is "Plans are
worthless, but planning is essential."

------
kzhahou
TLDR: Make decisions quickly.

------
juddlyon
Side note: I've never read it before, but Quartz is a supremely well-designed
website.

~~~
puranjay
It's funny because it doesn't have any of the usual gimmicks lay people
associate with "well-designed". No parallax, GIFs or fancy effects. Just plain
good design that focuses on usability.

I honestly love it.

~~~
vinceguidry
What's really funny is that two years ago, every single qz article posted to
HN came accompanied by a horde of comments on how awful the site UX was.

Site redesigns occasionally make the front page, I don't remember Quartz's
ever doing so.

------
decisiveness
A lot of the general ideas here seem helpful. I just have some slight issues
with the section on rallying support.

>Maybe you tell them that you used to work with a competitor who was quite
speedy

>I highly recommend this over a brute force method of escalating things to the
person’s manager or throwing competition in their face.

Seems contradictory.

I'd also point out that questions and comments like:

>Can you help me understand why something would take so long?

>Hey we’re really betting heavily on this, and we really need you guys to
deliver.

>Are we working as smartly as we can?

when directed at someone, can be vague and off-putting without some valid
specificity behind them.

------
trhway
the key isn't "quickly", the key is to have knowledgeable and smart decision
makers who do in 1 second the amount of mental work that would take other
people orders of magnitude longer.

~~~
ape4
Right. Quickly making incorrect decisions probably isn't so good.

~~~
rbobby
See: lemmings

------
0xdeadbeefbabe
I quickly decided not to read this as it would just disrupt my philosophy of
not painting myself into a corner.

------
dataker
> Google is fast. General Motors is slow. Startups are fast. Big companies are
> slow

------
rokhayakebe
_All else being equal,_ XYZ _makes a difference._

is the weirdest logical statement.

------
ilaksh
So basically the executive's job is to make snap decisions and crack the whip.

------
danielam
And then there's festina lente...

------
Ologn
> Challenge the when...for items on your critical path, it’s always useful to
> challenge the due date. All it takes is asking the simplest question: “Why
> can’t this be done sooner?” Asking it methodically, reliably and habitually
> can have a profound impact on the speed of your organization.

Sounds like a great organization - the person implementing something, who has
the most knowledge of how long it will take to implement, needs to be
"challenged" by someone who has no clue about how to implement what they are
asking for or how long it will take. What they are describing is a broken
organization, or the beginnings of behavior that will break an organization.

I mean, it's fine to say we need to prioritize implementing certain elements
of business logic, so we'll shrink the project scope so that those elements
will be implemented faster. But to advise people to "habitually" "challenge"
every schedule given by implementers is pathological behavior. It can work for
a few months, but then the people doing the work get burned out and leave.

I have seen shops with confident IT managers who are not afraid to say "no" to
unreasonable requests and deadlines, with a solid team of programmers and
admins who have worked together for a while and get along, who have stayed at
the company for a while and who have executed well on many projects together,
with clean code bases and solid infrastructure, and who generally work forty
hour work weeks, with the occasional marathon before a big release, or if
things are breaking.

I have also seen shops with browbeaten IT managers, often new to the job, who
are overrun by their bosses and business unit managers, with an IT team with a
lot of turnover (except maybe 1 or 2 embittered people who have been there
longer than the others), where people and departments are engaged in office
politics, where projects have vague and ever-changing requirements,
unrealistic deadlines, death march coding marathons by overworked coders,
which are interrupted by putting out fires due to the code base with massive
technical debt and broken infrastructure. These are the kinds of companies
where the executive "habitually challenges" deadlines the weak IT manager
gives him, who gives in and dumps the new unrealistic deadline on his team.
This is the kind of company where a programmer is thrown into an existing
project at the last minute, because the programmer who was working on it quit,
and at your first meeting a Microsoft Project slide is shown and you're told
that you're already three weeks behind schedule on your contribution.

Which of these two companies wind up succeeding, and which end up floundering
or even failing?

(The only caveat I give to my own scenario, is that in companies where IT is
not central to the business, they can often survive a broken IT department,
when their core non-IT business is doing very well. Their company would work
even better if they followed the rational scenario, but their broken IT
department is not always fatal to the company when they're doing well in their
core non-IT business.)

