Is this toothpaste?
A protocol to make decisions and move faster
At work, we make decisions all day. Most decisions fall into one of the following categories:
Reversible decisions- These can be easily changed with minimal impact on customers or other teams
Toothpaste decisions- These can't go back in the tube; the decision has permanent impact on the business in some way
Most decisions we make at work are reversible.
It’s easy to perform small beta test, trial a new process for 2 weeks, or experiment with a new meeting format. However, most people apply the rigor demanded of toothpaste decisions to every single decision they make, even the reversible ones. Since being wrong feels scary and terrible, people often opt to pull in a bunch of stakeholders and outsource ALL decisions to committee. This method of operating over time can slow things to a crawl and reduce agency (which is linked to burnout).
So — I’ve come up with a way to help me (and others) make decisions that feel good AND prevent unnecessary drag.
Ask: Is this toothpaste?
If the decision is a toothpaste decision, first try to “carve off” a smaller, reversible decision from the larger one. If that’s not possible, assemble the right humans to help make the decision, gather information as necessary, and work collaboratively to make the call.
If the decision is NOT toothpaste, make the best call possible with the information that’s available. Then figure out what evidence will emerge if the wrong call was made (data, observations in the environment, etc). Set a tripwire for reversing the call and schedule a reminder to check on it. Always be sure to share your decisions and your tripwires transparently with the rest of the team.
Here's an example:
Scenario
A colleague on another team wanted to improve the copy customers see inside the product. She wanted to identify at least 10 error messages that were worthy of revision using a large bank of existing customer reports. He came up with several ideas about how to best review and prioritize the customer feedback, but he needed to make a decision and execute it.
Is this toothpaste?
This is definitely not toothpaste; it's reversible. If he selected a way of reviewing the feedback that didn’t produce the desired results, he could change tact easily.
What he chose
He decided that the people who talk to our customers every day were the best people to elevate the customer reports related to confusing copy in the product. So he developed an intake process (using a Slack workflow), wrote some instructions, and shared them with the right people. We opened the nomination process for 1 week.
The tripwire
He and I agreed that, if we didn’t have at least 25 ideas by midweek, we would re-evaluate our strategy and pivot.
What actually happened
We got 15 ideas by Wednesday. That didn’t meet our tripwire so we pivoted our strategy. (Because we set this in advance, it was very easy to evaluate the situation and adjust things quickly without shame or blame.) While we left the intake open, we also decided to review a subset of the customer reports recently submitted to further identify trends and directly consult other team members. With both the intake process and the thematic review, we hit our goal and had a strong list of ideas going into copy review sprint.
3 things to try with your team
Go through the last few decisions that your team made and figure out if they are reversible or toothpaste decisions. You might even discover ways to turn toothpaste decisions into reversible ones by making them smaller and more time bound. That’s good!
Practice setting tripwires for some upcoming projects or changes.
Normalize asking the question: Is this toothpaste?
2 questions to ask yourself
Do you and your team members feel empowered to make reversible decisions? If not, how might you build agency and trust on your team so that can happen?
Who do you need support from to try a strategy like this on the team?
1 way software can help
Use a Google Doc for your team to log reversible decisions, their tripwires, and the result. At the end of each month, review what’s in the log and look for learnings and patterns.