Maverick & Consensus Decision Making

Align yourself with a professional culture that matches what you value

The way an organization makes decisions is a key indicator of what working within it would be like. Norms for making decisions start with the CEO when the organization is very young and, as it grows, standard ways to make decisions develop, inform an organization’s values, and impact everything from employee satisfaction to product quality.

Once members of the organization begin to adopt ways of working and criteria for making decisions by assumption, rather than by conscious decision, then those processes and values come to constitute the organization’s culture.

— Clayton Christensen, The Innovator’s Dilemma

A useful way to differentiate working cultures through the lens of decision making norms is by considering a spectrum on which all decisions fall, and then plotting various types of decisions on the spectrum based on the agency an individual employee has to make them.

To better define the poles of the spectrum, we’ll refer to them as Maverick and Consensus decision making, respectively.

Maverick decisions are ones where it is assumed that the person who is closest to and knows the most detail about a problem is the one best equipped to decide what the path forward should be. Domain knowledge is valued extensively and trust between leadership and individual team members is high. Organizations that skew towards Maverick decision making are optimizing for quick, bottoms-up product iteration, which explains why these structures are typically found at early stage, disruptive companies that are trying to learn about their users and market. However, Maverick decision making can persist indefinitely, especially when organizations have strong competition. Recent, successful companies that have promoted Maverick decision making are Facebook and Uber.

On the other extreme, decisions that rely on Consensus with leadership assume that the person with the most business context that could be relevant to the problem is the one who should determine the path forward. More common at larger, mature firms, these leadership-led organizations are optimizing for fewer “wrong” decisions based on current business priorities and feel more top-down to individual team members. Organizations that skew towards Consensus are allergic to the idea of hitting a local maximum rather than a global one. Amazon and Apple have had great success by promoting Consensus driven decision making.

While many people feel passionately that one method or the other builds stronger teams and delivers better products, the truth isn’t that black and white. There are three dimensions that can impact the right style of decision making to use:

  • Type of decision

  • Business model

  • Competitive landscape

Different types of decisions require different amounts of involvement from leaders within an organization. It wouldn’t be appropriate for an individual product team to set broad, organizational pillars that all other product teams must build towards.

Similarly, a high frequency + low margin business that operates with considerable competition may need to skew more heavily towards Maverick decision making to allow for quick turnaround times when launching new products. This may not be true for a low frequency + high margin business that enjoys a virtual monopoly.

Regardless, all organizations can be identified on the spectrum based on how they make decisions. As a result, all companies can be defined by a range of where their decisions fall.

In the below example, Company X skews much more towards Maverick decision making, while Company Y tends to be Consensus driven. A prospective employee could reasonably expect more autonomy at Company X, but perhaps leaders at Company Y will be more directly involved with passing on their knowledge to team members.

To understand what it would be like to join an organization, though, where individual decision types fall on the spectrum is much more important than the overall range.

Let’s classify a few of the types of decisions that product management organizations make, using OKR setting for a new affordability initiative as our example.

  • Organizational Pillars —> ex. “Make our products more affordable”

  • Objectives —> ex. “Launch a new subscription product”

  • Key Results —> ex. “Reduce the median fee paid by users per use”

  • Targets —> ex. “Reduce the median fee paid by users per use by 10%”

  • Prioritization —> ex. “Launch a subscription product this quarter rather than something else so that we can take it to market before our competitors”

  • Headcount Allocation —> ex. “Hire 1 additional engineer to help launch a subscription product this quarter”

Decisions that fall on the Maverick side of the spectrum can be made by individual Product Managers, while decisions that fall closer to the right require Consensus with leaders at the Director level or higher. We can get a better understanding of Company X and Company Y, from our previous figure, this way.

Two companies, even within the same industry and of similar size, may have ranges that skew very differently. Similarly, companies with similar ranges may have vastly different cultures due to the placement of individual decision types on the spectrum.

Ultimately, many models can be successful. What’s most important is to work within an organization that aligns with your values. Similarly, organizations should make sure they have clear signal from potential employees about whether their values align with the organization’s.