Inclusivity In Decision-Making

Most teams don’t lack skill — they lack space to speak. And the funny thing is… it’s rarely intentional. Silence creeps in slowly. People start editing their ideas. Meetings get tighter, faster, heavy. The loudest voices take the mic. And everyone else quietly learns: “Maybe it's safer if I don't say anything.” But here’s the real cost: When people stop speaking, everyone loses. Innovation slows. Tension builds. And leaders make decisions with only a fraction of the real picture. Last week, I ran a leadership workshop for a 20+ year Indonesian household brand trusted by tens of millions across the archipelago. A company with that kind of legacy doesn’t grow by accident. It grows because people care enough to confront what’s not working. And like many fast-moving organizations, what they needed wasn’t more skill… but more space. Space to question. Space to challenge with respect. Space to admit uncertainty. Space to finally say what’s been held in for months (or years). By the end, they didn’t just talk — We co-created house rules, clarified decision rights, and made 30-day commitments to reduce bottlenecks and rebuild accountability. The shift was unmistakable: lighter faces, clearer minds, and a shared understanding of “how we work from today, together.” PLUS... it was FUN! A lot of laughs were had. I had them literally 'doodle' how they experienced decision making and make crystal ball predictions of what this organization would look like in 30 days. It reinforced something I see again and again: “Team performance issues” are almost always conversation issues in disguise. And the ROI? Research shows an estimated US$7,500 per employee is lost per year due to unclear decisions, rework, and communication breakdowns. The right conversations aren’t “nice to have” — they can be weaponized as a cost saving strategy. If your team is growing fast, stuck in escalation cycles, or carrying unspoken tension… it might be time to create that space. DM to explore what this kind of experience could unlock for your business. #futurefitleaders #facilitation #crossculturalcommunication

What if a CEO gave away all her decision-making authority? Created "Decision Rights Cards", literally handed them out: • CMO gets all marketing decisions under $500K • CFO owns all financial choices without board escalation • Front-line managers can modify any process affecting their teams No approval needed. No committees. No escalation. The board would think she'd lost her mind. But here's what control-freaks don't understand: Power hoarded is power divided. Power shared is power multiplied. This is commitment #4 of modern change leadership: We will know our power is best given to empower another, not hoarded to control. When you hold all the decisions: • You become the bottleneck • Your team becomes passengers • Your organization becomes fragile When you distribute authority: • Decisions happen at the speed of change • Your team becomes leaders • Your organization becomes antifragile The math is undeniable: 1 brain making 100 decisions < 100 brains making 1 decision each But we're still operating like it's 1920. Hierarchy. Control. Permission. Meanwhile, change is moving at 2025 speed. Exponential. Distributed. Permissionless. I built Change Enthusiasm Global with this principle at its core. From day one, I knew I couldn't split myself into a thousand pieces. I couldn't facilitate every certification. I couldn't be on every client call. If I wanted this to grow, I had to give away power. I've never facilitated our flagship certification program. Not once. I paid instructional designers to build it. I paid facilitators to deliver it. I worked with them to ensure quality, but I never stood at the front of the room. And you know what happened? They took this thing to places I never dreamed it could go. Because they brought their authentic energy, their unique gifts, their perspectives I could never have. That's what distributed power does: It multiplies possibilities. In a world where competitive advantage lasts months not years... Where front-line workers see change before executives... Where AI makes centralized intelligence obsolete... Control isn't strength. It's suffocation. Ask yourself: What decision could you give away today that would empower someone else tomorrow?

2 weeks ago, I did a 90-minute GTM alignment meeting with product and marketing leaders in San Francisco. We came out with three crystal clear decisions, and the only reason we were able to do that was the 2 weeks of pre-work that happened before. Let's walk through what worked: 1. Decide what you’re deciding I distilled down a long list of “open questions” into three pivotal decisions, the ones that would actually unlock the motion. Attached each with explicit trade-offs (because I wish things were that simple) to prevent rabbit holes: If we choose A, we defer X; if we choose B, we absorb Y within it. 2. Build one source of truth so everyone walks into the room with the right amount of context I partnered with our marketing ops team to pull exactly what our decision makers would need: TAM/SOM, pipeline shape, segment win rates, deal cycle, loss reasons, churn, AE coverage. As a result, we had 27 reports that I rolled up into a tight data pack with the help of my close personal friend, ChatGPT. These reports had the same filters, same time window, same definitions plus a short “signals” page for qualitative context from field conversations (so imp). 3. Ground it in product reality (now vs. near-term) The purpose of this workshop was not to debate product but make GTM decisions. And so, we needed to come in with an informed POV. I cataloged our product by what’s in production today, what’s already committed, and what’s missing, to make this motion successful. This was a simple stoplight view (now / on roadmap / not yet) to keep everyone honest about feasibility and timing. 4. Pre-wire the room I shared the pre-read with the execs a few days before and updated the live agenda: >silent read >A/B/C with pros/cons >time-boxed discussion > vote > owner + date captured in the deck. and voila, we came out with the decisons we needed, in fact, 2 mins before the end time (with a huge sigh of relief for me). 5. Aftercare like your life depends on it Coming out of the room, I prepared a decisions log, FAQ, FLM blurb, and an owners-and-dates checklist in one place. This follow-through is where most alignment dies, so treating it like a release made sure we're keeping it alive. What's your biggest unlock to GTM alignment?

🤔 Weekend Reflections 👉 As we head into the #AIActionSummit, the idea of creating a CERN for AI—both in Europe and beyond—continues to gain momentum. This call has been further amplified by SoftBank's recent $500 billion investment announcement in the US and the release of Deepseek in China 🌍. 🤔 But is a centralized, CERN-style model the only way forward for sustained, responsible innovation in AI? 👉 In my piece for Frontiers Policy Labs, I proposed a different path: a polycentric, distributed approach to AI and science. This model addresses three key challenges in the current AI ecosystem: 1️⃣ Access to computational resources 💻 2️⃣ Access to high-quality data 📊 3️⃣ Access to purposeful AI modeling 🤖 🔗 Read my full article here: https://lnkd.in/ezXxaX_Z 👉 The same rationale can be applied to AI governance, much like the distributed internet governance model I proposed earlier. 🤔 Distributed governance offers a more resilient, flexible, and inclusive framework with several key advantages: ✅ Facilitates cooperation among existing and emerging actors without the need for new bureaucratic structures. It encourages decentralized dialogue on key issues, fostering more flexible and creative solutions to emerging issues and applications than a top-down, centralized system. ✅ Acts as a “routing” function, enabling interoperability and collaboration by adopting shared standards and common ontologies. This approach empowers dispersed actors to contribute innovative solutions, shifting decision-making power to communities and experts who might otherwise be excluded. ✅ Promotes information-sharing and evidence-based decision-making. Distributed governance networks prioritize data-driven approaches, allowing stakeholders to accurately evaluate the effectiveness of governance initiatives across different regions and contexts. ✅ Allows for both granularity (localization) and scale (globalization). Issue- or expert-based organizing principles help coordinate decisions at the local, national, regional, and global levels. This ensures local actors are included in global conversations and prevents issues from escalating unnecessarily (This will also be discussed on Tuesday at our event on Aligning Local and Global AI Governance - See https://lnkd.in/eb8xfJh9). Q How to design AI governance—not as a monolithic institution, but as a dynamic, interconnected network of nodes working toward a common good? 🔗 Read my paper: A Distributed Model for Internet Governance (and eager to hear how it may apply to similar challenges of AI governance): https://lnkd.in/ejyUtset #AIActionSummit #OpenScience #DistributedGovernance #AIInnovation #Collaboration #PolycentricAI #AIgovernance #Deepseek #CERN

Decision surfaces are where preparedness becomes operational. Most organizations map processes. Very few map the points where a human, a system, or both together commit the organization to a course of action. A decision surface is not a workflow step. It is the moment where judgment is exercised, risk is accepted, and accountability is engaged. In traditional organizations, these surfaces were visible : a manager approved, a committee signed off and a policy governed. The decision and the decider were legible. AI changes this. When systems recommend, filter, rank, or act, decision surfaces become distributed, accelerated, and often invisible. A recruitment algorithm shortlists candidates before a human ever sees them. A pricing model adjusts margins in real time. A risk engine flags transactions based on patterns no analyst fully understands. The decision happened. But where exactly? And who owned it? It is a structural shift that governance has not yet absorbed. Three types of decision surfaces now coexist in most organizations : - Automated surfaces, where systems decide without human intervention. - Augmented surfaces, where systems inform human judgment. - Distributed surfaces, where outcomes emerge from sequences of micro-decisions across humans and machines, with no single point of control. Each type requires different oversight, different accountability models, and different readiness criteria. Treating them identically guarantees blind spots. The practical problem is that most organizations cannot answer basic questions about their own decision architecture. Which decisions are fully automated? Which signals does the system treat as authoritative? Which human roles still carry genuine veto power? Which decisions accumulate risk silently because no one owns the aggregate? Without this clarity, AI governance becomes theater : policies exist and compliance is documented but the actual decision fabric remains unmapped. Preparedness starts here. Not with transformation roadmaps or capability assessments, but with a clear view of where decisions actually happen. Technology follows readiness. Readiness follows visibility. The next question is who owns these surfaces when ownership itself is distributed. That is where accountability enters. #WorkforcePreparedness

I’ve run close to 1,000 strategy workshops in the last 4 years. Here are 10 things I’ve learned... My journey with workshops started long before consulting. During my 22 years at Disney, I sat through thousands of them worldwide, most of the time as a participant. Back then, I thought I knew what made a workshop effective. I’d seen the good, the bad, and the ugly. But stepping into the role of facilitator changed everything, because my biggest lessons aren’t really about facilitation at all. They’re about how people behave when you put them in a room and ask them to think, decide, and commit together. Here are 10 of my main takeaways: 1) Frameworks help, but they’re not the point. They guide the process and spark ideas, but the real value isn’t in filling boxes or following steps. It’s in the conversations and decisions they nurture. 2) Silence is uncomfortable, but sacred. Psychologists say “group pause” is crucial for deeper thinking. Silence often brings honesty and insight if you know how to interpret it. 3) People are more scared of being seen than of being wrong. Fear of judgment makes people hide. You must create a safe environment, so they can contribute without performing a character. 4) Leaders who speak last enable better conversations. Teams thrive when leaders listen first and synthesize later. It prevents bias, widens input, and shows that every voice matters. 5) The best breakthroughs come after tension, not consensus. Consensus often dilutes outcomes. I prefer to shake things up with constructive friction that stimulates creativity and innovation. 6) Getting the problem right matters more than solving it on time. Framing the problem is more important than solving it fast. It's better to take time than arrive on time at the wrong solution. 7) Participants only see 10% of the facilitator’s work. Most of a workshop’s prework is invisible: structure, research, context. What matters is the energy in the room and the outcomes it creates. 8) You can’t plan for 100%. Something can go wrong. There are always surprises. Facilitation is less about the agenda, more about reading the room to adjust if needed. 9) The workshop’s quality depends on the quality of relationships. Even the best facilitation can’t fix a dysfunctional team. I invest a lot of time in team dynamics because it's the foundation for insightful conversations and alignment. 10) The workshop doesn’t end when the session ends. You must harvest the unspoken thoughts, reflections, and realizations that surface hours or days later. Follow-ups are key because breakthrough happens in the moments that follow. What all of this has taught me is simple: Workshops aren’t really about strategy, they’re about people. If you create the right conditions, the strategy will follow. If you don’t, no framework in the world will save your business. - - - PS: DM me 📩 if you’d like a peek inside the 25+ workshops included in the Brand Strategy Program✷.

🎉 Excited to share that our paper with Luke Rhee, "The Power and Limits of Distributed Representations in Strategic Decision Making," has just been published in Strategy Science! We tackle a fundamental organizational challenge: How can companies make better decisions by combining the partial insights of multiple specialists? Think of it like landing a plane—neither pilot nor copilot has complete information, but together they succeed. We call these collective cognitive models distributed representations, and we develop a formal theory of when they help or hinder performance. Key takeaways for designing decision processes: ⚖️ Averaging delivers robust performance across most settings—a reliable default choice 🤝 Unanimity protects against errors when good opportunities are rare and managers lack experience 👤 Specialists excel only when a single factor dominates (e.g., star power for blockbusters) 🎯 Experienced generalists can outperform all approaches—but they're extremely scarce in practice 💡 The core insight: There's no universally "best" structure. Effectiveness depends critically on the three-way interaction between individual expertise, aggregation method, and environmental conditions (complexity, uncertainty, opportunity abundance). Our framework extends Brunswik's lens model and introduces "decision boundaries" from machine learning—bridging individual cognition and organizational structure, two research streams that have evolved separately for 60+ years. This feels particularly relevant as organizations increasingly integrate AI into decision-making. Understanding human-AI distributed representations will be essential for designing effective hybrid systems. 📄 The paper is open access. Read it here: https://lnkd.in/gvETSmTm #Strategy #OrganizationDesign #DecisionMaking #StrategyScience #AI

I am sure many of you would have noticed this. Many organizations often hire smart professionals and then design systems that stop them from thinking. In 𝗧𝗲𝗮𝗺 𝗼𝗳 𝗧𝗲𝗮𝗺𝘀, 𝗚𝗲𝗻. 𝗦𝘁𝗮𝗻𝗹𝗲𝘆 𝗠𝗰𝗖𝗵𝗿𝘆𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗹 shows that centralized authority fails in complex, fast-moving environments. Not because leaders are incapable, but because no single leader can hold all the context. When decisions are pushed closer to where the work actually happens, something powerful shifts. People don’t just execute. They think. And that’s how a leader empowers them. 𝗗𝗶𝘀𝘁𝗿𝗶𝗯𝘂𝘁𝗲𝗱 𝗱𝗲𝗰𝗶𝘀𝗶𝗼𝗻-𝗺𝗮𝗸𝗶𝗻𝗴: • Gives teams ownership, not just tasks • Builds confidence and accountability • Allows real-time adaptation instead of delayed escalation This isn’t about losing control. It’s about replacing control with clarity of intent. When people understand the why, they don’t need constant permission. They make better decisions faster, and they stand by them. In today’s world, empowered teams don’t just move quicker. They feel trusted. And trusted people show up differently. #Leadership #TeamOfTeams #EmpoweredTeams #DecisionMaking 

I used to think leading a distributed team meant finding the right project management tools. Turns out, the tool that mattered most was something simpler: showing my work. When we were building a team of 180+ across the US and India during COVID, I noticed that the decisions that landed well weren't necessarily the ones that went "right" in hindsight. They were the ones where people saw how we got there. A product pivot that made sense in California looked reckless in Chennai - until they understood what customer data we were looking at. A budget reallocation that seemed obvious to leadership felt arbitrary to the team - until we walked through the trade-offs we considered. So we started operating like we were working in public, even internally. Before rolling out a major change, we'd write up the alternatives we rejected and why. We'd share the customer feedback or market signal that pushed us in this direction. We'd even admit what we were uncertain about. And we'd play actual recordings of customer and prospect calls in our all-hands meetings, including the messy conversations where people reacted to our proposed solutions in ways we didn't expect. Of course, some decisions still came down to a judgment call. We didn't always have consensus. But everyone could trace the logic and apply the same framework to their own decisions. To my surprise, this approach didn't slow us down. It distributed decision-making authority faster than we would have otherwise. When your team understands how you think, they don't need to wait for you to weigh in on everything. We don't do as much of this explicit writing and sharing today since we’re back together in person, but it came back to me recently when Vidhya Madhusudan mentioned during her 5-year milestone how impactful those call playbacks were. It reminded me that transparency builds something more valuable than alignment: a team that thinks like owners.

Why most workshops fail before they start. It's not the facilitator. It's not the content. It's not the activities. It's what happens before anyone walks in the room. I've seen brilliant facilitators deliver perfect sessions that changed absolutely nothing. And I've seen average facilitators run simple workshops that transformed how a team operates. The difference was never the day itself. It was the design flaw that most people don't think about. Most workshops are designed like this: → Pick a topic → Build an agenda → Choose activities → Deliver the session → Hope something sticks That's an event plan. Not a change plan. The flaw is that the workshop gets designed in isolation. Nobody asks these three questions that determine whether it works: Question 1: "What specific problem are we solving?" Not "team communication" or "leadership development." Those are themes, not problems. → Vague: "We need to improve collaboration." → Specific: "Decisions that should take 2 days are taking 3 weeks because nobody knows who has final sign-off." If you can't describe the problem in one sentence with a measurable symptom, you're not ready to design a workshop. You're ready to design a survey. Question 2: "What will be different on Monday morning?" → Not: "People will feel more aligned." → Instead: "Each team will leave with a written decision-making protocol that names the decision owner for their top 5 recurring decisions." If you can't describe what Monday looks like, the workshop won't work. Question 3: "What happens on Day 15?" The workshop is not the intervention. The workshop is the launchpad. → Who checks in on the commitments made in the room? → What's the structure for accountability? → When is the first follow-up session? If the answer to all three is "we haven't thought about that yet," you're about to spend thousands on something that evaporates by Monday. Here's what a properly designed workshop looks like before Day 1: → A specific, measurable problem to solve (not a theme) → A clear picture of what changes on Monday → A follow-up system designed before the session, not after → Pre-work that gets participants thinking about the problem in advance → A sponsor who owns the outcomes, not just the budget The session itself is the easy part. Anyone can fill 3 hours with activities. The hard part is making sure those 3 hours actually matter 3 weeks later. That's the difference between a workshop and expensive theatre. ___ Save this for later (three dots, top right). Share with friends → ♻️ Repost. Get consultant-grade workshops every Sat → https://lnkd.in/eSfeUapJ