Unilateral decisions

Unilateral decisions are always a bad idea.

I’m pretty certain that’s true. At least, it always has been in my experience. Yes, even when I made the decision.

The problem is this: Pretty much every decision you make affects other people in some way.

In the case of small decisions, these effects are often quite small. If I decide to read in bed 5 minutes longer, then there’s a chance my wife will be unimpressed if the light wakes her up, but by morning she will probably have forgotten, so no great shakes.

Inevitably, decisions we make in our professional life tend to be rather further reaching. Even just writing functionally correct code in different ways can affect other people for some time to come - be it in terms of maintainability, performance, extensibility, … the list is near endless.

When it comes to big decisions, ones that clearly are going to affect a lot of people, for example choosing the direction to take a widely used library, mandating a particular toolset or technology, even mandating dress codes, deciding who’s going to be invited to a party - these are decisions where not involving others is likely going to hurt, sooner or later.

The key is knowledge, after all knowledge is power right? Getting input from others gives you more knowledge, be that the knowledge that they’re in agreement with you, that maybe you could make a better decision, or just the realisation that they’re all morons and you should just do it anyway.

Just one thing - don’t ask a group of ‘yes-men’ (or women). Then you may as well not have asked anyone.