How founders can hack their decision-making to scale their startup

For founders, hardly a minute goes by in their working lives when they are not making a decision. These can be as simple as what words to use in an email to a customer, or they can be as complex as what to put in the next feature release.

Photo credit: Startae Team

But as a startup scales, it’s important to train business staff to carry out the types of decisions that a founder often makes, optimizing operations, and freeing up the founder to do more.

The problem here lies when decision-making frameworks are opaque. When the thought process behind certain choices isn’t clear, growth is inhibited and staff morale declines.

In some instances, a lack of clear decision-making processes results in a team member’s decision being reserved. In time, this builds a culture in which staff become dependent on the founder to make all the choices.

Susann Frey, a change management consultant from Singapore, explains that decision-making needs to answer this question for everyone in the business: What’s in it for me? Frey has extensive experience dealing with this type of problem in large organizations.

“When people understand ‘why’ and ‘how’ the decision fits into the strategic direction, then ‘what’s in it for me’ has been addressed. The relevance and clarity improve the rate of adoption of a decision. This, in turn, reduces the risk of people filling in the blanks, which can lead to uncertainty, rumors, and mental stress,” says Frey.

Sharing how decisions are made

There are three steps that founders can take to make their decision-making framework clearer for their staff.

1. Adopt a framework

Whether you’re a CEO of a Fortune 500 company or the founder of a hot fintech startup, business leaders do pretty much the same thing every day. They gather intelligence and action improvements in “words and pictures.” These can range from a small change to a web page to a more strategic change like a new feature in the product or pricing structure.

The only trouble with this framework is that staff don’t learn decision-making patterns. They see the action but don’t understand why they are being made.

“Clients who don’t have a decision-making framework defined are difficult to serve or satisfy. This is mainly because there’s no single source of truth among stakeholders about the key factors we need to know when strategizing, producing, and distributing compelling and consistent words and pictures on their behalf,” says Ian Paynton, the co-founder of an agency in Vietnam called We Create Content.