[infogulch]

My favorite when making long term decisions is "Do we need to make the decision between these choices now, or can we proceed keeping all the choices open and make the decision later?"

Sometimes there's a belabored debate between two choices and answering this question can reveal that the choices don't have to branch right now, that they have (or could have) a shared 'path prefix', enabling us to make the choice later when we have more information.

[Cerium]

The optimal time to make a decision is the moment before it hits the critical path. Where I work we make this actionable by saying to defer decisions and pull forward unknowns.

[mathgorges]

100% agree with this. You never know what you’ll know in the future :)

The phrase “delay the decision to the last responsible moment” is my favorite mantra about this.

[Cerium]

Oh, I like that phrasing. Thanks for sharing.

[blowski]

Sometimes there’s an underlying agenda to these conversations. The people involved are like lions trying to find out who’s the “alpha” - they’re less interested in the decision than establishing a hierarchy in the decision-making process.

[ozim]

I really like "alpha" guys when it comes to decisions that they have to take responsibility later on.

Usually "alphaing" is about no stakes decisions which makes me super annoyed. Team could just make any decision and be done with it.