Are You Making a One-Way Door or Two-Way Door Decision?

Are you making a one-way door or a two-way door decision? Make sure you know the difference!

In startup land, because of the pace of growth, the decisions come fast and furiously, especially for leadership.

By the end of the day, you’ve made so many decisions that you can’t even decide what to have for dinner.

To help reduce the cognitive load, use Jeff Bezos’s “one-way door and two-way door” decision framework.

It’s really simple: is the decision very difficult and costly to change (a one-way door) or easily reversible (a two-way door)?

Pick the entirely wrong market to enter? That’s an easily reversible two-way door decision when you’re just starting out.

Picking a co-founder or an investor or a fundamental technical architecture? Those are one-way door decisions that are very costly or even impossible to reverse.

Most decisions throughout the day at a startup are two-way door decisions. The earlier you are in your journey, the more decisions are two-way doors and can be changed.

When you don’t have a lot of data, just make educated guesses on those two-way door decisions, and turn it right around if it’s not working out.

When you come across one-way door decisions, spend the time to really investigate and assess the decision thoroughly.

Save your rumination for the one-way door decisions, and don’t stress over what’s for dinner!

Check out Jeff Bezos’s discussion on this concept here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rxsdOQa_QkM