The 12-Week MBA Chapter 17: Defining the Decision - Getting the Problem Right Before Solving It
Most teams think decision-making is about picking the right option. The authors say the real problem is that teams do not even define what they are deciding in the first place.
This is post 19 in my 12-Week MBA retelling series.
Chapter 17 tackles the “define” phase of decision-making. It sounds simple but it is full of traps. You might spend days researching only to realize the decision was never really a decision at all. Or you might pick from the obvious options and miss the best one entirely. The chapter shows how strategy, values, and simple meeting procedures can fix these problems.
Why You Brush Your Teeth (And What It Has to Do with Business)
The authors start with a surprisingly good question. Do you decide to brush your teeth every morning? Technically yes. But you do not actually sit there weighing the pros and cons each day. You made a bigger decision a long time ago about living a healthy life, and brushing twice a day is just a small execution step of that bigger plan.
Organizations work the same way. A company makes thousands of decisions every day. It would be insanely expensive if every single one required a meeting and a debate. Most small decisions need to happen on autopilot, guided by some bigger plan. And that bigger plan is what business people call strategy.
Strategy: Getting Everyone to Drive on the Same Side of the Road
Here is one of my favorite stories from the book. In 1967, Sweden switched from driving on the left side of the road to the right. The Swedes call this event “Hogertrafikomlaggningen” (yes, that is one word). The thing is, it does not actually matter which side you drive on. What matters is that everyone drives on the same side. The alternative is chaos.
The authors use this to reframe what strategy really does inside a company. We tend to think of strategy as some brilliant chess move against competitors. Sometimes it is. But at its core, strategy is about getting everyone to drive on the same side of the road. It limits the options so teams at every level do not have to reinvent the wheel for every decision.
Business professor Roger Martin describes strategy as a “cascade” flowing through the organization. A bank’s executives decide to focus on retail banking instead of investment banking. That is the top-level strategy. The head of retail banking decides the competitive advantage is great customer service. The customer service leader decides this means hiring the right tellers and training them well. Each branch makes hiring decisions based on that. Even individual tellers make judgment calls about how to serve each customer.
The key insight from Martin is that the old “executives make strategy, workers just execute” model is wrong. Decisions happen at every level. Execution is not about following orders. It is about making your local decisions in a way that lines up with the bigger decisions above you and beside you.
And here is the fun twist: Strategy does not always come from the top. The authors describe a scenario where a bank teller named Mary figures out that customers fall into three groups with different needs. She adjusts her approach for each group. Her colleagues copy her. The branch starts outperforming. The technique spreads. Eventually the CEO announces a grand strategy called “Winning in Retail” and retires to write a memoir called Pure Courage: Leading a Business from the Front. The strategy that the CEO takes credit for actually bubbled up from the bottom.
Visions, Values, and the Boring Policy Manual
Besides strategy, there are other things that constrain decisions and make them faster. Vision and mission statements help. Company values help too, as long as they are genuine and not just words on a poster while the company does the opposite.
And then there is the humble corporate policy manual. Not inspiring. Not motivational. But surprisingly effective at removing decisions from the pile of things people need to think about. All of these things serve the same purpose: pruning the decision tree so people do not get paralyzed by too many options.
The Danger of Running on Autopilot
So autopilot is great. But there is a catch.
Remember Sweden’s road switch? The authors dig into what happened after the change. First few days: traffic jams and some accidents as expected. Then something interesting happened. Accident rates dropped below normal. People were driving more carefully because the new rule forced them to pay attention. But by 1969, rates had climbed back to where they were before. People got comfortable with the new system and went back to driving on autopilot. The caution wore off.
This is the danger of automated decision-making in organizations. When everything runs on strategy and policy and habit, subtle changes in the environment can slip past unnoticed. The autopilot keeps you going, but it also makes you blind to new problems.
Fast Thinking vs Slow Thinking in Organizations
The authors connect this to Daniel Kahneman’s famous idea from Thinking, Fast and Slow. We have two thinking systems. The fast one makes split-second judgments. It is great at reading whether someone is angry. It is terrible at evaluating statistics. The slow thinking system is better at analysis, but it is lazy and does not want to activate unless it really has to.
The fast system’s biases are not just bugs. They are also features. If you see something long and gray in the grass, your fast system screams “snake!” and you jump back. Maybe it was a stick. But in the world we evolved in, it was better to jump away from a hundred sticks than to calmly analyze one actual snake.
The real skill is knowing when to switch from fast to slow thinking. Organizations need the same switching mechanism. They need to know when to let strategy and policy handle things on autopilot, and when to stop and think carefully.
The book identifies three situations every organization faces:
- Survive by handling routine decisions in the here and now
- Thrive by planning for the long term
- React when the world throws something unexpected at you
For routine decisions, strategy and values work great on autopilot. For long-term planning, the future is uncertain and people will have conflicting views. That is when the team needs to stop the autopilot and think deliberately. And for crises, you need to surface disagreements fast because ignoring them can be fatal.
The Real Problem: Not All Voices Get Heard
Now here is the part that really stuck with me. Even when everyone on a team is trying their best to contribute, teams regularly fail to use all the knowledge their members have. The reason is simple: some people talk easily in meetings, and some do not.
The authors call them “showboats” and “wallflowers.” Showboats take the ball and run with it. Wallflowers have ideas that might be just as good or better, but they get drowned out. And it gets worse over time. When your ideas consistently get ignored, you start doubting yourself and sharing even less.
Here is what is important: there is no connection between how loudly someone expresses an idea and how good that idea is. None. Some of the quietest people in the room are quiet because they are busy listening, reflecting, and forming deeper insights. If you could actually hear those insights, they might change the entire direction of the decision.
Fix the Process, Not the People
So should we train wallflowers to be more assertive? The authors say no, or at least not as the primary approach. There are three problems with trying to change quiet people.
First, perception of assertiveness depends partly on things people cannot control, like the sound of their voice. Second, the reason some people hold back is that they are exercising other valuable skills like active listening. Forcing them to behave differently might kill the very thing that makes their contributions valuable. Third, when people try to act against their nature, they come across as fake. And fake people have a hard time gaining trust.
Instead, the authors recommend fixing the process. Rather than training people to be louder, build meeting structures that make sure every voice gets heard regardless of volume.
The simplest technique is the round robin. Each person in the meeting gets a set amount of time, in a strict order, to share their view. No one interrupts. No one butts in. The order is arbitrary. Everyone gets the same time. Showboats have to wait, wallflowers have to speak.
This is not a new idea. Nations have constitutions. Legislatures have parliamentary rules. Even the US Senate has the filibuster (for better or worse). The principle is the same: predefined rules that are independent of the people involved and the specific decision being made.
You do not need something as heavy as Robert’s Rules of Order for your team. But a few simple rituals like the round robin can unlock contributions that were always there but never made it into the conversation.
Key Takeaway
Defining the decision is not just about figuring out what to decide. It is about building the structures that make sure the right decisions get made, the right options get discovered, and the right people get heard.
Strategy is not just a competitive weapon. It is the mechanism that keeps everyone driving on the same side of the road. Without it, every small decision becomes a debate.
But autopilot has risks. You need to know when to turn it off and think slowly. And when you do think, make sure your process gives every person at the table an equal chance to contribute. The loudest voice in the room is not always the smartest one.
Book: The 12-Week MBA by Nathan Kracklauer & Bjorn Billhardt | ISBN: 978-0-306-83236-9
Previous: Chapter 16 - Collective Action and Decision-Making
Next up: Chapter 18 - Deliberating and Executing - From discussion to action.
Part of the 12-Week MBA retelling series