Podcast Review: Make Great Decisions Quickly, the Unscary Way with Alamelu Radhakrishnan

I recently found this Podcast and have been listening to a different episode each morning 2-3 times a week as I walk.

• She uses first principles to get to the truth of the problem. I’ve never heard of first principles before, but is an area I would like to dig further into.

This one struck home with me, as getting consensus is very hard. Not everyone will be happy with a decision; sometimes, you need to get alignment and move on. I like her callout’s around “trying something out.” Dont feel you have to do anything forever, if it’s not working after a few weeks, change. But always make sure to get feedback so that you can course correct.

• Building consensus is bad

  • Instead of targeting the desired state

  • Consensus is the middle ground, which means we haven’t gained ground

  • How to get buy-in

  • Why are they opposed?

  • Priorities in stack ranking

  • Collaborative exploration

  • Can you disagree and commit?

    • If I disagree, am I missing something?

  • Escalations

    • Get context quickly instead of compromising and creating consensus

  • Model the behavior for them

    • Let’s try it for x weeks and come back and try it

  • Monitoring

    • Measure desired state

    • The sooner we know we’re wrong, the quicker we can pivot

• Rebuilt 3x and rebuilt from first principles

• Stop worrying about costs that are behind you

• It’s not just a or b, there’s always more options - not just two

• Storytelling

  • Bring people along for the ride

  • Showing the roadmap

• Recognize change and its difficulties

• Delegates the problem, not the solution

• Outline the desired state and principles

• Autonomy is critical to accountability

• Create a safe space - make it okay to fail

  • Celebrating learning