Disagree and Commit: A 5-Step Playbook to Make Faster, Smarter Decisions

How to speed up decision-making in your team without collateral damage

Matthew Spaulding/ Stocksy

Companies face two major challenges when making decisions. The first is arriving at the decision itself. The second, and the most critical, is ensuring everyone is on board. Even the best decision will fail if your team doesn't support it and commit to making it work.

Imagine the captain of a ship planning a trip. Ensuring the crew is committed to the journey is as vital as charting the right route. If the team secretly doubts the journey's success, the result is a voyage featuring mutiny and mistrust.

Driving alignment is a tricky concept, as I discuss in a previous post. Rushing your team into alignment might result in hurried agreements, but not genuine commitment. You don’t want to discover that the crew wasn’t really on board when facing a storm.

The sooner a team deals with disagreements, the better.

Instead of pursuing the illusion of alignment, great leaders open the floor and invite teammates to voice their differences. However, a never-ending debate isn…