Decision-Making, Simplified: Async LDRs (Part 1)

From impulsive choices to paralyzing overthinking, we all grapple with it. This post shares my journey in developing a structured approach to decision-making, called Asynchronous Lightweight Decision Records (Async LDRs). Specifically applicable for large / remote teams, Async LDRs can enhance accountability, collaboration, transparency, and collective ownership in decision-making.

My journey

In 2016, inspired by a mention of Lightweight Architecture Decision Records in the Thoughtworks Tech Radar, a colleague and I set out to pilot it in our client project to document their technology evolution and its current landscape. It turned out to a be a low-effort, high-impact solution, since it improved the team morale, moved the needle for technology adoption, and became a key asset in onboarding of new team members effectively.

In 2019, I was part of a squad which was driving legacy modernization and engineering effectiveness for a client. Here, I adapted this technique to cover process and people along with technology, which I called Lightweight Decision Records (LDRs); it again proved to be invaluable in building consensus faster, increasing conviction in our decisions, bringing people from different departments into the conversation, and enabling folks to commit before moving ahead.

In 2020, my journey pivoted from technology (consulting) to L&D (operations). Also, the “new normal” emphasized the importance of remote working (and its tools), especially for large teams. By 2022, I was heading a large L&D team with a peak size of 70 folks and a vast landscape of stakeholders. Even LDRs had to evolve for this context and thus Asynchronous Lightweight Decision Records (Async LDRs) were born! Kudos to our team and leaders for adopting this technique quickly and we were able to leverage Async LDRs for several strategic conversations such as pitching for an investment, sunsetting irrelevant programs, contextualizing a people process, building our digitization roadmap, seeking a legal opinion, and so on.

Decision dimensions

Key dimensions of a decision

I visualize a decision as a mindmap of several key dimensions, namely (clockwise from top left):

• Context – in which the decision is being made. It’s important to explicitly describe the status quo and the factors that are pushing for a change.
• People – comprised of folks who are actively part of decision-making, folks who are advisors (no “veto power”) and mainly core / extended teams affected by the decision
• Alternatives – are generally two or more choices that could move the needle. Similar to Context, thinking through all possible alternatives makes the process open and objective.
• Consequences – each choice has elements of positive and negative consequences. Attributing these consequences to each choice brings in higher clarity on the tradeoffs and changes associated.
• Status – decisions are subject to change with context and people. A decision may be proposed, accepted (or rejected), superceded (by a new decision) or even deprecated.
• Commitment – to move forward with the decision, action the necessary steps, and strive for advocacy. Its important to work towards an explicit commitment (usually written) and not assume the same.
• Effective date – which explicitly signals the switch over. An agreed date also helps in change management, planning contingencies, and handling communications.
• Storage – a decision when recorded makes the knowledge explicit. To maximize value, I strongly recommend formatting decision records to be lightweight, and storing them in an accessible manner.

Wrapping up

Structured decision-making has been one of the sensible defaults in my technical and program management journeys. While ADRs seemed like a novel concept upon discovery, a lot of value gets unlocked upon adapting the technique for one’s context. Seeing ADRs evolve into LDRs and later Async LDRs on my teams has been a gratifying experience. Async LDRs have immense potential to influence our ways of working positively in areas such as enabling team members to challenge / make decisions safely, allowing busy leaders to participate meaningfully, large (especially remote) teams to commit to a shared vision quickly, etc.

In this post, I have described the key dimensions of a decision; understanding and contextualizing the same is crucial for its effective implementation. I intend to unravel more elements of the Async LDRs technique in follow-up posts.