Advice - Decisions designed for Speed
by Tony Fifoot, ~4 mins reading time
This is part 3 in a series, which I have now decided will be 5 parts, not 4.
In Part 2, I introduced the decision making spectrum and explained why the two default extremes, Individual Action and Consensus, cause most decision dysfunctions. Today I’ll focus on the first of the two better alternatives: the Advice process.
This is for everyone. Not just leaders; not just senior people; anyone who makes decisions, and that's all of us.
“With the advice process, any person can make any decision but must seek advice from affected parties and people with expertise.”
What's wrong with deciding alone
Individual Action is fast and feels efficient. I know what’s needed, make a call and move on. But decisions made without input have a habit of creating problems downstream: resistance, rework, and revisiting. The time you saved by not consulting anyone often gets spent twice over explaining and validating your choice.
The other cost is quality. When you decide alone, you're only working with the context you personally hold. You miss the detail that someone closer to the work would have flagged, or the implication that someone in a different area, or with different context would have spotted. The decision gets made, but it's not as good as it could have been.
How the Advice process works
At its core, the Advice process is pretty straightforward. Seek advice before finalising a decision, but a bit of structure helps. A named decision owner (anyone at any level) proposes the decision, shares the relevant context, and seeks input from people who are affected by the decision, and people who have relevant expertise. Listen, clarify and consider the advice, and then make the decision and state the outcome (inform those who have been involved).
The decision owner is still fully empowered to decide. Seeking advice is not the same as seeking approval, and it's important to be explicit about that. Input doesn't equal veto power. The difference needs to be clear or people will blur the line and you'll end up back in consensus territory.
One thing that often surprises people: the act of writing down the decision clearly, along with the supporting context, is itself valuable. It forces you to clarify what you're actually trying to achieve and what information genuinely matters. Plenty of decisions get sharper, or you come to understand the problem, and the decision you actually need to make, more clearly.
It works async too
One of the most practical things about the Advice process is that it doesn't require a meeting. A decision owner can share context and a clear proposal via a Slack thread, wiki, or an email, invite responses by a specific time, and then decide. For most decisions, the whole thing can happen in a day without anyone sitting in a room together.
This matters because one of the biggest friction points in decision making is the calendar. Waiting for availability, booking time, getting everyone in the same place. The Advice process can sidestep most of that.
Why it produces better outcomes
Decisions made through the Advice process tend to be better quality than Individual Action, for the obvious reason that more relevant perspectives have been considered. But they also tend to get better buy-in - even when people disagree with the final decision - because their input was genuinely sought and heard.
That last point matters more than it might seem. One of the hidden costs of Individual Action is that people who weren't involved, turn up later to disagree, raise follow-on issues, or just disrupt. Involving them is an important part of effective change. The Advice process moves that conversation to the right moment, which is before the decision is made, not after.
It's also a powerful way to distribute decision making more broadly. When the people closest to the work are encouraged to make and own decisions through a simple structured process, you increase agency and engagement step by step, one decision at a time. Over time you reduce bottlenecks at the top and get faster, better-informed calls throughout the organisation.
Tomorrow in Part 4: the tougher piece: Consent, and how to replace consensus with something that actually moves things forward. This is the approach that changes not just how you decide, but the size, shape and effectiveness of the decisions you make.
If you missed the first 2 Parts of this series, links are below.