Speed vs. Quality: How Teams Make Better Decisions Faster

1. The Real Problem: Everything Gets Treated the Same

In daily work, small, reversible decisions are often reviewed as thoroughly as major strategic ones. Or they get waved through in a rush. The first step is a simple distinction:

• Reversible (Two-Way Door): can be adjusted or reversed → decide quickly and test.
• Irreversible (One-Way Door): has major, hard-to-undo impact → examine carefully.

Jeff Bezos formulated the 70 Percent Rule: For reversible decisions, 70% of the information is enough. It saves time without sacrificing quality.

2. Decision Guardrails: Guidance Based on Risk, Cost, and Reach

Many discussions drag on unnecessarily because it’s unclear how thoroughly something needs to be examined. Decision guardrails provide clear orientation.

Typical dimensions include:

• Cost: How much budget is affected?
• Reach: How many users or teams are involved?
• Risk / Reversibility: How hard is it to correct?

Small decisions can be made quickly. Large and far-reaching ones need greater care.

Examples

• Price changes up to 5%: Decide within 48 hours.
• Hiring leadership roles: Multi-step process with careful consideration.
• Budget under €10,000: Decide within one week.

3. Methods That Combine Speed and Quality

Methods are not an end in themselves. They help teams get to clear decisions faster. These four formats have proven effective:

• Timeboxing: Set strict time limits. Small topics 15-30 minutes. Strategic questions max 60 minutes. After that: make a decision.
• Mini-Matrix: Write down two pros and two cons for each option. This creates clarity quickly.
• 5-Minute Pre-Mortem: Imagine the decision turned out to be a mistake. Collect reasons and countermeasures to reduce risks.
• Consent vs. Consensus: It’s enough if no one has a serious objection. This gets the team into action faster.

4. Start Small, Stay Safe: MVD and Rollback

Not every decision has to be big and complex. Often a Minimum Viable Decision (MVD) is enough - the smallest decision that allows the team to move forward. This keeps you flexible without taking on major risks right away.

The key is that an MVD is always tied to clear success criteria: one metric, a threshold, and a prepared rollback. If the threshold is exceeded, you return to the starting point or move on to the next option.

5. Clarity Creates Speed: Roles in the Decision Process

Speed often doesn’t depend on the content but on responsibility. If it’s unclear who decides and who only provides input, endless loops arise. A simple role model brings structure:

• Decider: makes the decision and carries responsibility
• Input: provides data, insights, and expertise
• Challenger: questions assumptions and highlights risks
• Scribe: documents the decision and next steps
• Owner: implements and ensures execution in daily work

With these roles, everyone knows their responsibility. Decisions are made faster, clearer, and more sustainably.

6. Make Decisions Visible So They Have Impact

Many decisions lose their impact because they are poorly communicated or not communicated at all. The result: repeated questions, duplicate discussions, and uncertainty in the team. Visibility is therefore a central factor for speed and execution.

A consistent format helps document decisions briefly but transparently. This way, everyone immediately understands what it’s about and what happens next.

• Decision: What exactly was decided?
• Why: short reasoning, criteria, trade-offs
• Alternatives: which options were discarded
• Execution: owner, next milestone, deadline
• Review: when and how the impact will be checked

7. Measure What Matters: Few Metrics, High Value

Without measurement, you rely on gut feeling. By tracking a few clear metrics, you can quickly see whether your decision-making process is actually improving. Four metrics are enough:

• Time-to-Decision (TTD): days from the start of a question to the final decision
• Reopen Rate: share of decisions that are reopened for discussion
• Commitment Score: does the team understand and support the decision?
• Lead-Time-to-Impact: time from the decision until visible impact

Even just looking regularly at TTD and Reopen Rate will show within weeks whether the team is deciding faster and more clearly.

8. Case Example: From 14 to 3 Days

A SaaS team used to discuss new features for an average of two weeks. After introducing guardrails, timeboxing, and a central decision log, their Time-to-Decision dropped from 14 to 3 days. At the same time, the Reopen Rate fell from 28% to 8%.

The result: faster releases, fewer discussions, no loss in quality. Clear structures made the difference.

9. Common Objections, Short Answers

• “Documentation slows us down.”
  Half a page is enough: it saves hours of questions later.
• “We already know what to do.”
  Clarity especially helps new colleagues and when something goes wrong.
• “Not every decision is big enough.”
  That’s why clear thresholds are important: define from when the structured process applies.

10. Conclusion

Speed and quality are not mutually exclusive. With guardrails, clear roles, lightweight methods, and a visible decision log, you create a flow that combines both: making progress faster and making better decisions.

Sources & Notes

• Jeff Bezos: 2016 Letter to Shareholders (70% rule, Two-Way-Door principle)