Decision rights
Battle testedWho decides what, how decisions get recorded and reused, and what a founder keeps at each stage.
The Alphabet decision framework
How I run decisions, at any stage. Five steps, one per letter.
- Assign
Every recurring decision gets one named owner, written down: who owns what, when and why. Founders keep only what only a founder can do.
- Bound
Owners decide alone inside written money and risk limits. An engineer does not open a bank account. Above a limit, or when a call cannot be undone, it goes up.
- Challenge
Anyone can challenge, with a reason, before the call. After it, everyone commits. It reopens only with new evidence.
- Document
Every decision lands in a light log, captured with AI: what, who, why and the result expected. Search it before solving anything twice.
- Evolve
Review what was decided, check whether it worked, and change the rule. That is how processes get built that hold up and last.
Who decides, and how?
Up to seven questions. The rust line is your path. Each faint branch is where the other answer leads. Turn the dial to your stage; slide or type your headcount.
Is there a works council (Betriebsrat), and does the decision touch hiring or transfers, monitoring tools, working hours or pay systems?
- Yes: Run the works council step first
- No: More questions
Is the group already deadlocked, after a recommendation and any agreement step?
- Yes: Disagree and commit
- No: More questions
Can the decision be reversed at an acceptable cost within a few weeks (a two-way door)?
- Yes, two-way door: More questions
- No, one-way door: More questions
Does it affect more than one team’s work?
- No: The owner decides alone
- Yes: More questions
Is there already one obvious owner who does the work that follows from the decision?
- Yes: That person is the single owner
- No: Run a 60-minute DACI
Is it on the founder-reserved list (fundraising terms, equity, exec hires and firings, legal entity or jurisdiction, pricing model, layoffs, mission)?
- Yes: The founder decides, after a memo
- No: More questions
Does it recur, and do three or more functions need a say?
- Yes: Use RAPID
- No: Use DACI with one Approver
Run the works council step first
Inform them, hand over the documents and wait for consent or the one-week deadline. Then come back to the door question. Hires and monitoring systems both need the works council.
Disagree and commit
The decider decides. The dissent goes in the log, and then everyone acts on the decision fully.
The owner decides alone
Tell people after. Log one line only if the choice might be re-argued. Reversible decisions can and should be made quickly by high-judgement individuals or small groups.
That person is the single owner
They consult, then decide. The person who does the work that follows from a decision gets to make it.
Run a 60-minute DACI
Name a Driver and one Approver. Prepare for 15 minutes, run it for 60 with 3 to 6 people, and write the outcome down.
The founder decides, after a memo
One decider. Circulate a one to three page memo 48 hours ahead and record dissent. One-way doors must be made carefully, slowly and with consultation. The memo format is practice.
Use RAPID
One person who recommends and does about 80% of the work. Agree holders only where there is a real constraint. One decider close to implementation, and a named person to perform.
Use DACI with one Approver
A one-page memo and a log entry. This is lighter than RAPID and enough for a one-off cross-team call. The fit is practice.
Answer the last question to see your outcome.
Stage
Who decides what
Set by the dial on the instrument. It follows your headcount until you turn it.
- Runs it
- Founders, with one named decider per area.
- You keep
- All decisions, split by area between the co-founders.
- Hand off
- Nothing formal.
My stance
Assign owners from day one. Founders keep only what only founders can do, like the company bank account.
- Runs it
- Founder as decider, with each early hire as single owner for their area. Ops generalist as backup.
- You keep
- Product direction, hiring, pricing and money.
- Hand off
- Tool choices, vendors and process in each area.
My stance
Write the owner map and the limits down, and start the log now. With AI it costs almost nothing.
- Runs it
- Function heads as single owners. Chief of Staff or ops lead runs the process.
- You keep
- Strategy, exec hires, fundraising and the reserved list.
- Hand off
- Cross-functional calls, hiring plans within budget, vendor choices under a threshold.
My stance
New heads will challenge how things are done. That is why you hired them: let them, before the call.
- Runs it
- Exec team, each a decider in their domain. Chief of Staff runs the decision cadence.
- You keep
- Exec team makeup, the board and the major bets.
- Hand off
- Org design within a function, budgets and all two-way doors.
My stance
Review the log every quarter. Change the rules that did not hold, and write down why.
- Runs it
- Exec team and delegated councils, with a single-threaded owner per bet.
- You keep
- Capital, the board, CEO succession and culture.
- Hand off
- Almost everything else, with written authority matrices and an audit cadence.
My stance
The same five steps at any size. The owner map gets longer, and the founder’s list gets shorter.
How to run it
Numbered steps, each with an owner, a time cost and a document.
List the decisions
Write down the 15 to 25 decisions that recurred or stalled in the last quarter.
Classify each one
Mark each as a one-way or two-way door, and note how many teams it touches.
Assign a decider
One decider per decision type, and a named backup.
Mark the reserved list
Write down what the founder keeps. Everything else is delegated unless it is a one-way door.
Publish it
Put it in the handbook, review it with the leadership team and add “who decides?” to the meeting template. Repeat every six months.
Open the page
Write the question, the deadline, the options and the criteria.
Name the roles
One Approver, the Contributors and the people to inform.
Gather input in writing
Give Contributors a fixed window of 1 to 3 working days. Practice, not Atlassian.
Meet only if input conflicts
Run it for 60 minutes with 3 to 6 people. The Driver chairs and the Approver decides.
Decide and write down dissent
The Approver decides in the room or within 24 hours. That timing is practice.
Tell the informed list
Send the outcome to everyone who needs to know.
Capture each decision
One row for any decision with a consequence beyond a week: what, who decided, date, two-line rationale, alternatives rejected, confidence as a percentage, reversibility and a review date.
Link it where people look
Link the log from the meeting template and the board pack.
Sweep weekly
Add missing decisions from the leadership meeting notes.
Review on the date
Compare the outcome with the stated confidence before reading anything else.
Count each quarter
Count reopened decisions and decisions with no decider.
How decision rights go wrong
Failure modes
- No single decider, or two
One name per decision, and a mandatory decider column in the log. Bain: no decider stalls, several cause a tug-of-war.
- The founder re-opens delegated decisions
Count reopened decisions each quarter. Say “I disagree and commit”, or override in writing.
- Late vetoes
Gather agreement while building the recommendation, before the decision. Bain.
- Framework theatre
Use RAPID or DACI on at most 3 to 5 recurring decisions at first.
The biases behind them
- Hindsight bias
After the outcome, people think they knew it. Cassar and Craig found it among founders who never formed an operating business. Record the probability and reasons at decision time.
- Authority bias
People defer to the founder or an investor. Collect written input before discussion and let juniors speak first.
- Anchoring
The first number or option dominates. Collect options in writing before anyone shares a recommendation.
- Status quo bias
Choosing no change by default. Add “do nothing” as an explicit option, with its cost.
Where the evidence disagrees
Is RACI useless for decisions?
Yes
McKinsey (2022): too many people get a vote or a veto, and RACI is static and tracks tasks, not decisions.
McKinsey, The limits of RACI: primary source (opens in a new tab)No
Use RACI for repeating process steps such as month-end close, never for decisions.
Practice: practiceThe split is by use. Process steps and decisions need different tools.
Does the Agree role have a veto?
Bain’s article says Agree is a sign-off that cannot be ignored, and also that people in that role do not have veto power to block, undo or reject a decision. The two pull in different directions. Decide the rule yourself and write it on the page.
Bain, Decision Insights: primary source (opens in a new tab)Efficiency savers
What each step saves. Where nobody publishes the number, it says estimate.
Run DACI only when a decision is stuck
Atlassian budgets 15 minutes of prep and 60 to run, for 3 to 6 people. The saving is fewer unstructured meetings. No saving figure is published.
Atlassian Team Playbook, DACI: primary source (opens in a new tab)Treat two-way doors as owner decisions
Removes 1 to 3 hours a week of meetings per manager once adopted.
Estimate, no published data: estimateName one person to recommend and one to decide
Bain: the recommender does about 80% of the work. Unassigned recommenders caused major delay in one mining company case. No time figure.
Bain, Decision Insights: primary source (opens in a new tab)Decision log with review dates
Saves 30 to 60 minutes a week of “what did we decide” searches in a 20-person company.
Estimate, no published data: estimateSpend and headcount thresholds
Removes 2 to 4 founder approvals a week at Series A.
Estimate, no published data: estimateShorter meetings
Porter and Nohria suggest one-hour meetings could often be 30 or 15 minutes. No percentage saved is given.
Porter and Nohria, via CNN: secondary source (opens in a new tab)
Rules by country
Monitoring tools
BetrVG §87: primary source (opens in a new tab)Where a works council exists, it has co-determination rights over technical systems that monitor behaviour or performance. A new analytics or chat-monitoring tool therefore needs a works agreement.
Hires and transfers
BetrVG §99: primary source (opens in a new tab)Consent is needed before hires and transfers. The works council has one week to object.
General information, last checked 29 Oct 2026. Not legal or tax advice.
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