The Cheese Pizza Problem: Consensus Is Killing Your Best Decisions

Welcome to my newsletter! I'm Dave Anderson, an ex-Amazon Tech Director and GM. I write this newsletter I've called Scarlet Ink, which is a weekly newsletter on tech industry careers and tactical leadership advice.

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If you read enough on LinkedIn, you'll see there's a bias towards consensus decision-making. It revolves around this idea of inclusion and equality among employees.

I think it's lovely to be inclusive and let everyone have an equal voice in deciding which restaurant to visit for a team lunch. However, I don't think this approach is effective for business decision-making.

I'm going to walk through why big groups make poor decisions and then get specific about how tech companies can effectively make big decisions.

Big groups make boring decisions.

Have you ordered pizza for large groups? What a nightmare. I always hate those discussions. Because it's an endless litany of "I only like..." and "I'm fine with anything except these 7 ingredients".

If 25 people contribute to a pizza buying decision, you're getting cheese pizza. And perhaps a few pepperoni pizzas, and a few vegetarian pizzas. You're rarely touching the specials, or the fun one with goat cheese and pepperchinis.

Why? Because when you're trying to satisfy a big group, you need to pick non-offensive, non-polarizing options. You're aiming for everyone to find the answer acceptable.

If you're painting a house that you intend to sell someday, what color do you paint it? White, or beige, or gray. It's boring, but it doesn't offend anyone.

When a large group decision is made, you rarely say, "Holy smokes, what a cool and daring decision!" Instead, the feeling is usually, "Yeah, that's as I'd expect." It's the result of an average of all those people. It might be logical, but it's not bold or inventive. Because bold and inventive ideas always scare or offend someone.

Now, would you agree that bold decisions are necessary for corporate success? I imagine you do. But for fun, we can think of the major innovations from successful companies over the last 25 years.

• ChatGPT was a weird and lucky choice to launch a text chat interface to the public (as they've repeatedly mentioned in interviews). It took off faster than any product, pretty much ever.
• Alexa was a wild bet, and heck, it still might have been a bad idea. But AWS was a wild side bet that became the center of Amazon's finances.
• iPhone success wasn't a given, and there are many anecdotes of how Steve went against group consensus in what was seen later as instrumental to their success.
• Metaverse was seen as a weird decision at the time, and.. oh wait. Maybe that one isn't the best example. Or perhaps it is a good example, because it's still a bold bet that a group wouldn't have chosen.

What allows or encourages someone to make a bold decision? I think the biggest thing is ownership.

To be bold and take risks, you need to feel like you're the owner over the consequences. I wouldn't boldly decide that a friend should wear a big fluffy purple robe to work. It wouldn't feel right because the social consequences would not be mine. But wearing one myself to work? Sure, the consequences are my own, and so I have made that decision a few times for Halloween. I liked it. That's a great robe.

Anyway, back to work. If you're asked for some advice on someone's project plan, would you be likely to propose that they investigate some cool new technology? Maybe (depending on your personality), but more likely you'd review their ideas and see if they'd work. It isn't really your place to be bold for them.

Similarly, if you're one of 25 people in a big team, would you boldly state that your team should switch to that new technology? Maybe you'd suggest it to your peers, but you certainly wouldn't insist on it. It wouldn't be right for you to make a bold decision for the larger group. Heck, you couldn't, because you don't have the power to make that deicsion.

And what would the group do? In my experience, a few people would be lukewarm about the move, and it would go nowhere.

Alternatively, imagine you're the most senior engineer on a team. You might feel empowered to be an owner over bold design decisions. And you know that you'll face the consequences of those bold choices (good or bad consequences). Due to that level of ownership, you could feel confident making a stronger argument for moving to a new technology.

What are we left with? In a group without strong ownership, everyone has a small piece of the decision pie. The least offensive options end up chosen because no one strongly objects. Least offensive pizzas? Boring. Least offensive business ideas? Boring.

As a side note before I continue, you'll see the next photo is from a trip we did to the Channel Islands.

I sent a video message to our daughter from the island (while gulls circled overhead) about how they used to grow blueberries on the island. Because of that, Scorpion Anchorage used to be called Blueberry Bay. And I told her that if she listened carefully, she could hear in the background the cries of the Blueberry Bay Gulls.

Get it? I crack myself up. She didn't find it as funny as I did.