Dedicated to Mark Carter – who never passed the buck, even when the cards were stacked against us.

If you feel like you don’t really have much say at work – you’re probably right. Here’s how to start making a real impact on your day-to-day reality.

I’d make a terrible poker player. I have one of those faces that come with subtitles – you can read me like an open book (most of the day it’s an action-packed firefighter drama, around lunchtime something closer to “1001 Microwave Meals”). Still, one of the most important rules I follow at work comes straight from poker. “The Buck Stops Here” – an approach made famous by US President Harry Truman (1) – puts an end to endless back-and-forths.

Who’s supposed to make the call? Why is it on you again? What happens if you don’t? In this week’s Memo you’ll learn why dragging issues at work are most likely your fault – and how you can finally put a stop to them.

Passing the Buck

In the Wild West, poker-playing cowboys marked the one who had to shuffle the cards by sticking a knife into the table next to him. A knife with a deer-antler handle, the so-called “buckhorn.” To keep it fair, each round a different player shuffled, and the knife was passed along. Over time, the phrase “passing the buck” stuck as shorthand for shifting responsibility to someone else (2). A move our coworkers still use all too often – though with a bit more respect for office furniture.

The problem of passing responsibility shows up most clearly in the difficulties companies face when making decisions. Managers in a typical large organization spend 37% of their time just trying to make one. More than half of that time is wasted (3). In the end, fewer than half of decisions are made on time (4). Sounds familiar? No surprise there. McKinsey reports that the average Fortune 500 company today loses as many as 530,000 workdays to inefficient decision-making – that’s about $250 million in labor costs down the drain every year (5).

A hint at the causes comes from the main factors driving decision delays:

• organization size – companies with up to 10 employees close deals in an average of 38 days, while those with over 10,000 employees take 185 (6);

• number of stakeholders – from available studies we can (in savage simplification) conclude that every additional person involved in an organization-wide decision extends the time to reach it by 1 month (7).

6 Ways to Avoid Decisions

Making decisions sucks. The person making them risks professional and financial consequences (especially if they’re a board member), puts their reputation on the line, and on top of that takes on a mental burden (so-called “decision fatigue”) so heavy it can even lead to earlier burnout (8).

People aren’t stupid, so they avoid the guilt, stress, and risks that come with making decisions whenever they can. Of course, they rarely do it openly – either in front of others or even to themselves. Which is why it usually takes the shape of one of the six covert tactics :

1. Bullshit structures – committees and roles without power or resources, overlapping responsibilities between multiple people (e.g. “Chapter Lead” and “Team Lead”), or double accountability (e.g. being both a PM and a program manager for something else) – all serve to create the illusion that a problem has an owner or that the organization is actually addressing it.

2. Analysis paralysis – drowning in analyses, data, and ever-multiplying options prevents a decision from being made in reasonable time. Instead of actually reducing risk, it causes delays and increases the costs of alternative choices.

3. Procrastination – postponing decisions, often by raising new doubts at the end of what seemed like a conclusive meeting, suggesting yet another person who should be consulted, and scheduling another meeting on the same topic.

4. Consensus seeking – the extreme case being the Japanese practice of nemawashi (25); this shows up as the attempt to get absolute agreement from everyone involved, which results in something closer to a wish-granting ritual or group therapy than effective management.

5. Reversed (upward) delegation – living in the belief that absolutely every decision more complex than choosing between the urinal and the toilet bowl requires the CEO’s involvement – often justified in English by “That’s above my pay grade.”

6. Bureaucratic cowardice – theatrical pseudo-oversight mechanisms such as multi-level approvals, demanding a “full business case” for any initiative, or the obligation to consult or inform far too many people (9). These flourish in companies where every failure ends in humiliation or sanctions; they drive participants to depend on cover-your-ass rituals and produce a strong bystander effect (10).

It’s almost certain you’ve already run into every one of the tricks listed above. Worse, it’s more than likely you’ve resorted to them yourself. Yes. You avoid decisions too. Interestingly: in the long run this drags you down more than the potential consequences of any decision you might make.

So yes, making decisions sucks. However, research shows that – over the long run – avoiding them can make you feel just as bad.

Why Stop a Buck?

We already know that decisions are an organizational nightmare on a global scale. After all, according to Bain & Company, companies lose 15–20% of their productivity every year because of inefficiencies in this area (11). But here it’s worth asking the fundamental question that has kept philosophers awake for centuries: “So what?” In the unlikely case of banalities like “that’s what you’re paid for” or “so the company doesn’t go under” not being convincing enough for you to engage more in making decisions, let’s take a look at what science says about the impact of decisions on you personally.

High demands from your environment combined with low control due to lack of decision-making power raise your stress levels, increase the risk of burnout, and harm your health (12). Chronic lack of influence breeds learned helplessness: apathy, resignation, and depressive symptoms (13). Low control also correlates with higher cortisol, worse sleep, and a greater risk of illness (14). Avoiding decisions amplifies long-term regret about inaction (15) and undermines your sense of meaning and agency in daily life (26).

Meanwhile, cross-cultural research from 11 countries shows that making decisions builds a sense of autonomy (16), which in turn accounts for a full one-third of psychological well-being (27). Every closed choice also strengthens our self-sufficiency (17). And self-sufficiency improves our health, measurably lowering the probability of the decision-maker dying within the next 18 months (18). On top of that, decisions made in the face of difficulties increase our mental resilience (28) and give us a stronger sense of meaning and agency (29).

That said – screw the $250 million in wasted labor costs Fortune 500 companies rack up every year. And screw the productivity drop tied to decision-making gridlock. The real point is: as humans, we make decisions so life has meaning and flavor. You deserve a say in what happens to the organization you dedicate a third of your day to. So let’s talk about all the fear-driven doubts our brains love to feed us to avoid doing exactly that.

How to Stop a Buck?

If making decisions came naturally to me, I wouldn’t need a rule dedicated to it, nor would I have so many thoughts circling around it. Humanity wouldn’t have invented those 6 ways of avoiding them, and sociologists – instead of cranking out 33 footnotes for this text – might finally settle whether people who actually like marzipan even exist(!?).

Meanwhile, the animal fear we often feel when faced with a decision is a real obstacle to making one. And since we’re talking about decisions, it usually shows up in the form of so-called “doubts” (aka ‘buts’). Here are 5 common doubts that often come up for me and for colleagues in my teams, along with approaches that can help resolve them. You don’t have to read them all. Pick the one – or ones – that came up for you at your last meeting and see whether the suggested approaches would bring you any closer to making a decision. If nothing rings a bell, jump to the next part.

But does this situation even require a decision?

• Default aggressive (30) – by default, choose action (a decision) rather than staying passive. Keep the initiative by addressing problems that come up in the discussion/meeting as long as they fall within your area of competence.

• Your body will often tell you that the situation calls for action. And most of the time it will also do everything it can to talk you out of it. Read the piece “Don’t Piss in Your Boots” to learn how you can turn this to your advantage.

But can I even make the decision in this case?

• The right to make a decision is rarely granted explicitly. More often, it follows from our responsibilities – if the company expects us to deliver a result, then it also empowers us to do whatever it takes to achieve it. And that includes making decisions. (If it doesn’t, your organization is acting irrationally and you need to escalate.)

• “The one the Jews come to for counsel is the rabbi.” (31) – that’s a piece of wisdom from one of my favorite books. If you’ve been invited to a meeting and asked a question, it means that, in the eyes of the organizer and the group, you are the source of the decision on that matter.

• Granted, this is a last resort, but also keep in mind the resilience of your organization. If you overstepped your authority and made a decision that fell within my remit, you’d find out about it very quickly. Very directly. So don’t overdo the caution – act in line with your best judgment.

But what if I don’t know which option to choose?

• Tough choices are mostly those between similarly appealing options. Ruth Chang explained this brilliantly in a TED talk, which you can watch here.
  
  So if you don’t know how to choose, you most likely lack enough differentiating data about the available options. There are two solutions: if you have the time and resources, get more information; if you don’t, you must make a discretionary decision carrying greater risk.
  
  The ability to make discretionary, intuition-driven decisions is one reason AI won’t fully replace managers anytime soon – and an expression of personal freedom, without which we’d be slaves to data. Put your free will to work.

But what if my decision has negative consequences?

• Perfect. In the long run, it’s better to make the call and test the real value of your expertise than to keep your surroundings – and above all – yourself in the false belief that you are in the know.
  
  Ultimately, only by making decisions and letting reality test them can we learn. Minimizing mistakes means improving decision quality, not avoiding decisions altogether. Trying to preserve authority or position by dodging verification is posturing, not caution.
  
  As the modern American poet Obie Trice put it in his single “Wanna Know”: Hop out the car, catch the bus. At least you’ll be established as the man that you are. Any other approach is a ready recipe for impostor syndrome.
  

• Enter: Jim Carrey. For me and several others who wrestled with the same doubt, Jim Carrey’s speech – excerpted here – was helpful.
  
  Mr. Carrey talks about how our motivations in life boil down to two: negative (fear) and positive (love), and he explains why it’s not worth acting out of fear.
  

• Also know this: the very fact that you made a decision – regardless of whether it was “right” – is a business advantage.
  
  Data shows that decision speed itself has a positive effect on its quality (32). Delaying that decision by even 5% would, as a rule, create a cost of delay far greater than any gain in quality (22). So it’s good you didn’t wait.
  
  It also matters that you didn’t escalate the decision upward – it’s frontline employees who hold, on average, 70% of the information critical for decision quality. The higher up you go, the worse it gets (23).
  
  By making the decision you kicked off another cycle of organizational learning, unlocked feedback, spared your team the opportunity costs of delay, and cut the costs of endless option-weighing.
  

• It may also help to know that the negative consequences of your decision – especially if you work in a large organization – often have more to do with organizational culture than with the scale of the actual fuck-up you might cause.
  
  Conservative organizations, e.g. in the public sector, promote risk avoidance by punishing failures harshly. Innovative companies actively reduce the subjective and reputational cost of mistakes by normalizing them. That’s how Amazon pitches itself to potential hires as “the best place in the world to fail” (24), and, in line with Working Backwards, even hands out awards for ambitious ideas that ended in failure. Spotify does the same (“fail-fikas,” “fail wall”), as does Netflix EMEA (“honourable failure”).
  
  If your company allows for this – focus on reality, not politics. If not – consider changing companies.

But what if nobody listens to me/my decision doesn’t stick?

• Making a decision is nothing more than moving from problem to solution. In other words – if your decision unblocked the work, it was effective. The simplest way to guarantee that effectiveness is to personally take the first step toward carrying it out. You don’t need to execute it fully – often it’s enough just to get it started.

• Disagree and commit – some people may not agree with your decision, but they have no right to sabotage it.
  
  Every sane decision-maker should make full use of the team’s potential when weighing options (see more in “Every Pro Has Its Cons”). But once an option is chosen, every person involved is obliged to contribute to execution as if they were its supporter – that’s part of their employment contract.
  
  Which means that even if one of your colleagues opposed the decision you made, they have no right to reopen the discussion just to finally “get their way,” nor to stand off to the side with folded arms and a face that screams “I’m not playing anymore.” Reminder: companies aren’t democracies, they’re dictatorships with fruit baskets on Thursdays and a sole working printer.
  
  The first to raise this – albeit in a much more civilized form than mine – was Andy Grove in his classic High Output Management. (21) His words were later echoed by Jeff Bezos in his 2016 shareholder letter. (20)
  
  If, after considering both their contractual obligations and the words of these authorities, someone still refuses to work on delivering the option you chose, maybe they just don’t want to work at all? Discuss it face to face, before their stance drags down the team’s morale and undermines the effectiveness of your decision.

• Consider NAG – one of the dark patterns related to decision making described in the next paragraph.

Where the Buck Shouldn’t Stop

So let’s assume for a moment that, moved by the greater good (the company’s) and your own, and having shed all doubts, you’ve become a confident decision-maker. As with anything, though, it’s not worth going overboard. While management literature lists about 9 types of problems that can stem from overzealous decision-making, let’s focus on the 3 most important ones I’d ask you to avoid:

• Reversed delegation and lower decision quality – decisions are only as good as the information behind them. And the most information is always closest to the problem. For instance: if it’s a machine breakdown, the person with the most insight is the worker standing right next to that machine, seeing what isn’t working. If you or your company have trained that worker that it’s not worth it – or too risky – to decide to stop the machine, they’ll waste time calling you for the decision. That decision then gets made by someone who may have never even laid eyes on the machine, and is far more likely to be wrong. That’s exactly why Toyota uses the Andon cord (19), and why you and your company should make sure decision-making is placed as close to the problem as possible.

• Micromanagement – petty authoritarianism. It shows a failure to understand the difference between strategy and the tactics used to carry it out. It happens when, instead of limiting yourself to a directional decision, you take it a step further and try to dictate the fine details of execution – details you won’t be executing yourself. This can also be triggered by your coworkers through reversed delegation, when – due to company culture or personal preferences – it’s easier for them to dump responsibility on a peer or their boss. You’ll find more on micromanagement in “Repeating Is Micromanagement” (coming soon).

• No Authority Gauntlet (NAG) – a phenomenon aptly described by Ashwani Badlani (33). It happens when the company gives you a task without the resources to deliver it, or when your decisions go beyond your real scope of authority. The result: in order to reach the goal, you depend on people who, since they report to other managers, will always prioritize their bosses’ requests over yours – even while they show up to your meetings and nod along at the wisdom of your directions. In the end, nothing actually gets delivered, and your intended goal cannot be achieved.

The Buck Stops With You

Put simply, knowledge work is about making decisions. You already know that avoiding them causes massive losses for the global economy, turns into a little circus, and ultimately harms your health. I hope the approaches to resolving common doubts will help you make them. Just be careful not to fall into one of the dark patterns described here.

Whether you’re a manager or a specialist, your company needs clear, straightforward decisions that move things forward. Not just from you, but from all your colleagues too. Your firm “The Buck Stops Here” will deliver double value – as the engine for your own work and as a good example for others. Along the way, it will also test how much your expertise is really worth. Now good luck with that buck!

Sources & side notes

As this time the text features 33 sources and side notes, they are available on a separate, dedicated page.

What do teamwork and dancing have in common? Here’s why it’s worth it to challenge and be challenged – and where to find the kind of healthy pressure at work that keeps you from going soft.

"A subordinate should in the presence of their superior look pitiful and foolish, so as not to embarrass the superior with their grasp of the matter" – so allegedly decreed Tsar Peter the Great (1672–1725) ❶.

Today, more than 300 years later, such an approach to workplace relations seems both pathetic and laughable. But is it though?

I’ve seen a sentiment much like the Tsar’s not only in more than one modern-day boss, but also – surprisingly – in some subordinates. Its equivalent between equals is nodding along to colleagues’ ideas in the names of the commandments “so that it may be pleasant” and “so that no one may be offended.”

Below you’ll read about why and when it’s worth saying “no” at work – to everyone. How to deliver a solid “no,” even to your boss. How to take a “no” on the chin in such a way that it won’t be the last honest “no” you’ll ever get to hear.

Cuddlelands

Let’s be honest – a sense of security is one of the most important aspects of work. It has a few basic elements, among them:

– physical (health) safety,
– job stability,
– fair accountability, and
– a friendly atmosphere. ❷

A friendly atmosphere! Naturally, since we were all raised on Winnie-the-Pooh and Care Bears, we’d like everything to feel nice everywhere. Always. At work, this mostly shows up as an aversion to questioning the attitudes of our coworkers or the quality of their results. After all, why risk a relationship when “nobody’s paying me for that” and “it’s not worth stepping on anyone’s toes”?

That’s why what you often see is a you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours kind of setup. And in the jungle of perks offered by high-paying industries, it’s sometimes harder to find an effective team than a tight-knit one. This is how whole workplaces emerge where a friendly atmosphere has completely replaced accountability – which my former colleague half-jokingly dubbed Cuddlelands.

Backbone Breakers

Even though the age of lords and peasants is long gone, some of us still work in companies where job stability and fair accountability depend only on staying in good favor with the boss. If you’re in such a place, then in terms of standards and organizational culture, the only thing separating your company from a medieval manor is the guarantee of physical safety — in other words, at least no one beats you there.

There are bosses so fragile in their self-esteem they can’t bear the slightest opposition from subordinates. My colleague, coach Eligiusz Kobyłkiewicz, presented a fantastic case study of this some time ago, titled The Reversible Castration of Managers — about an infallible director who stamped out all resistance and independent thought in his team, only to collapse under the burden of having to make even the simplest decisions on their behalf.

On the other side, I’ve also met employees with a naturally servile style. The kind who — probably in the name of proactively protecting their job stability and “fair” accountability — hang on their manager’s every word, happily rushing to carry out even the most exotic of their ideas.

Alongside the “Cuddlelands,” this is how teams arise whose backbone has been broken by an insecure boss and others that are spontaneously spineless. Together they make up the three horsemen of the friendly atmosphere in modern workplaces.

Apply the Pressure

I used to be a competitive ballroom dancer. The most important lesson I took from dance into business is this: achieving results requires mutual pressure from both sides.

Here’s how it works: the partners stand facing each other, touching with outstretched palms. Both lean slightly toward one another, creating gentle pressure with their hands. Now they can feel each other clearly.

If one side eases up, they signal to the other that they want to step back. If instead they increase the pressure, it’s a way of saying they’d like to move forward. The same goes for directing the pressure left or right.

Pressure makes the pair steerable. Mutual pressure guarantees constant communication.

It’s the same at work. Subordinates’ resistance can make a boss reconsider whether the task they’ve assigned is really useful. Pressure from colleagues can keep us from being late to meetings.

Beyond the obvious, natural push from the organization and from your boss, there are a few other forms of pressure that I believe are worth feeling at work:

• internal pressure – motivation; appreciate those who, through their attitude, raise the bar for everyone.

• peer pressure – according to research ❸ the most important form; it defines what the team won’t tolerate, sets acceptable standards across all aspects of work, and is the main expression of organizational culture, with a decisive impact on quality and timeliness.

• resistance toward your boss – forces them to set valuable, achievable, and well-defined goals and tasks, consistently and with proper lead time.

• pressure from other teams – both from those working with us in a matrix (e.g. UX, accounting, compliance) and from those similar to ours (e.g. another development or sales team); it provides different perspectives and acts as a benchmark for our own results.

Healthy Pressure

Although I’m not his biggest fan, Steve Jobs beautifully described the value of clashing with one another at work. You can hear his famous metaphor of a product team as a “polishing drum” in the recording below.

Without mutual pressure, ideas, tasks, or results don’t get polished by multiple minds. They miss out on the benefits of “collective genius.” They don’t gain from the “synergy effect.” But that doesn’t mean we should be crashing into each other like pebbles in an old washing machine drum (sorry, Steve). Instead, especially if you’re not fond of clashes or you work in an environment low on openness to criticism, you can create a synthetic conflict using one of four popular methods:

• Devil’s Advocate – appoint someone whose role is to look for weaknesses in the proposed solution. The criticism becomes depersonalized – it’s now just part of the play, not a colleague attacking you. Psychologist Charlan Nemeth found that even a faked devil’s advocate increased consideration of alternative solutions by 61% ❹.

• Premortem – a method developed by Gary Klein where the team imagines the project has failed miserably and tries to explain why. This reframes criticism – from negatively “tearing down” assumptions to positively contributing to the exercise ❺.

• Dialectical Inquiry – the team splits into two groups that support divergent solutions or different assumptions. Options are debated, then one is chosen or synthesized. In a meta-analysis of 26 studies, dialectical inquiry led to better outcomes in 87% of decisions compared to single-plan consensus ❻.

• Six Thinking Hats – a method by Edward de Bono where team members adopt six distinct perspectives: analytical (facts), intuitive (feelings), negative (against), positive (for), creative (alternatives), and facilitative (moderation). This forces a comprehensive examination of the problem ❼.

None of the above can fully replace an organizational culture where people treat each other like adults and substance outweighs politics. But they can serve as a good workaround when that culture is missing – and as a foothold from which you can start building it.

Pressure by Design

Smart organizations have been building constant, mutual pressure into their structures for at least 2,700 years. Leaving aside the Spartan diarchy – where two kings ruled while constantly keeping each other in check (8th c. BC) – the most famous example is Montesquieu’s separation of democratic powers into executive, legislative, and judicial (1748). If you doubt its effectiveness, just notice how much it enrages authoritarian populists.

The modern organizational equivalent of this approach is Atlassian’s Product Triad ❽. In this structure, the team roadmap is co-owned by three specialists with differing perspectives:

• UX Designer – focus on user desirability: the solution must delight the user.

• Product Manager – focus on business viability: the solution must make sense for the business.

• Tech Lead – focus on technical feasibility: the solution must be achievable and scalable.

And if you believe your own wisdom is enough to balance all three of these perspectives single-handedly – read my piece Every Pro Has Its Cons again. This time with comprehension.

A 2012 meta-analysis also highlighted two aspects crucial for the effectiveness of structured friction. These systems work when they are limited and depersonalized. They turn toxic when there are no structural boundaries or conflict-resolution processes, and when they take on a personal character ❾.

Sparks Will Fly

At the same time, I don’t want to fool you into thinking you can have your cake and eat it too. Yes – focusing on better results instead of patting each other on the back can have a negative impact on your workplace relationships. Your job is to create pressure in the most skillful, positive way possible. The fact that you don’t yet know how to do it doesn’t change the reality that your team and product could benefit from it. And yes, there will sometimes be misunderstandings and accidents along the way.

Paradoxically, applying pressure can only happen in an environment that is truly safe – one with a mature boss and a confident team, where mutual respect among members is a given ❿. If your workplace demands a constant, uncritical smile and crushes assertiveness, treating feedback as an attack on someone’s dignity or as a personal insult – let’s not kid ourselves, there is no real sense of safety there.

I sincerely wish for all of us to be part of organizations full of healthy pressure – and leave you with John Oliver’s brilliant cautionary piece on what happened to Boeing once it stopped being one of them.

Sources

① “According to legend, Tsar Peter the Great ordered: ‘A subordinate in the presence of his superior ought to appear oppressed and embarrassed, so as not to embarrass the superior with his knowledge.’ Modern historians, however, note this decree is apocryphal.” – Provereno Media. (2021). Did Peter I really issue a decree that subordinates should appear bold and foolish before their superiors? Source: Provereno Media

② “The WHO Healthy Workplace Framework defines the foundations of a healthy workplace as including the physical work environment, the psychosocial work environment, personal health resources, and enterprise community involvement. It also emphasizes a healthy organizational culture characterized by trust, honesty and fairness.” – Burton, J. (2010). WHO Healthy Workplace Framework and Model: Background and Supporting Literature and Practices. Geneva: World Health Organization. Source: WHO

③ “Of course, the best kind of accountability is peer-to-peer. Peer pressure is more efficient and effective than going to the manager…” – Patrick Lencioni, quoted in GTA University Centre. (2022). Creating a Culture of Accountability is Key to Success. GTA News. Source: GTA.gg

④ “Even when the role of devil’s advocate is only assigned, without genuine conviction, it still increases divergent thinking and the consideration of alternatives by 61%.” – Nemeth, C. J., Brown, K., & Rogers, J. (2001). Devil’s advocate versus authentic dissent: Stimulating quantity and quality. European Journal of Social Psychology, 31(6), 707–720. Source: Wiley Online Library

⑤ “A premortem is prospective hindsight: imagining that an event has already occurred increases the ability to correctly identify reasons for future outcomes by 30%.” – Klein, G. (2007). Performing a Project Premortem. Harvard Business Review, September 2007. Source: Harvard Business Review

⑥ “In a review of 26 empirical studies, dialectical inquiry groups produced superior decisions in 87% of cases compared with consensus groups.” – Schweiger, D. M., Sandberg, W. R., & Rechner, P. L. (1989). Experiential effects of dialectical inquiry, devil’s advocacy and consensus approaches to strategic decision making. Academy of Management Journal, 32(4), 745–772. Source: Academy of Management

⑦ “The Six Thinking Hats method identifies six modes of thinking: White (facts), Red (feelings), Black (critical), Yellow (optimistic), Green (creative), and Blue (process control). It encourages parallel thinking and comprehensive analysis.” – de Bono, E. (1985). Six Thinking Hats. New York: Little, Brown and Company. Source: Little, Brown

⑧ “Atlassian product teams are run by a triad – a product manager, a design lead, and an engineering lead – who share equal accountability. The tension between their different perspectives ensures better decisions.” – Bowen-Bate, J. (2025). Strength through tension: in defence of the product triad. Mind the Product. Source: Mind the Product

⑨ “Task conflict can improve decision quality when it remains depersonalized and bounded, but it becomes harmful when conflict resolution mechanisms are absent or when it shifts into relational conflict.” – de Wit, F. R., Greer, L. L., & Jehn, K. A. (2012). The paradox of intragroup conflict: A meta-analysis. Journal of Applied Psychology, 97(2), 360–390. Source: PubMed

⑩ “Psychological safety describes a team climate characterized by interpersonal trust and mutual respect in which people are comfortable being themselves. It is the single most important factor in explaining team performance.” – Edmondson, A. (1999). Psychological safety and learning behavior in work teams. Administrative Science Quarterly, 44(2), 350–383. Source: JSTOR

Despite being relatively young, the hardest part of my job – especially in meetings – has always been trying not to piss in my boots. Not in mine, not in my teammates’, not in the owners’, not in the company’s.

Shocking? Well, it gets easier to picture once you know that “pissing in one’s boots” is just a disgusting metaphor born from military mockery of easy, short-sighted decisions: “when a soldier’s feet are freezing, he can always piss in his boots; sure, his feet will get wet, freeze solid, and in the end someone will have to cut them off – but hey, he was warm for five minutes!”

In this week’s Memo, you’ll read about how I try – and what it costs me – to make sure what we build makes it to the finish line on its own feet.

A Total Lack of Self-Preservation Instinct

Smiling politely, our CEO sent my team on their way and asked me to stay behind. He pointed me toward the smallest conference room and closed the door behind us. The air still smelled like sweat – a clear indication that, lately, the company had been wringing people dry.

Silence fell. He remained standing, so I didn’t sit either. Still looking for the right words, he stared at the tips of his immaculately polished shoes. The sweaty air was slowly giving way to a choking wall of his cologne. After what felt like an eternity, he lifted his head, leaned both hands on the table between us, looked me straight in the face, and spat out: “Do you have any self-preservation instinct at all!?”

For those unfamiliar with zoology: this was the CEO’s way of reminding me that, in corporate terms, I was prey. A twenty-something line manager with a mortgage on his back, disposable at thirty days' notice. I was supposed to be scared.

“Don’t you understand that when you and I are in the same room, you’re in no position whatsoever to be right about anything!?” ❶ he said, referring to how I’d handled myself in the meeting that had just ended.

Throughout that very meeting, our CEO had been trying to force specific UX changes ❷ to the product onto one team member after another. And throughout that very meeting – with a few exceptions – I had to push back, challenge his reasoning, and reassure the team that we were sticking to the original plan.

Apparently, from his perspective, I’d chosen to risk my career rather than back decisions that – honestly, and even now – I believed were wrong.

I was about to find out at what cost.

How Not to Piss in Your Boots

Do you think I enjoyed it? That I wouldn’t rather have been the management’s favorite? That it never occurred to me to just shut up and keep good relations at the expense of results? Or to stay quiet and let my team choose on their own between our stance and the CEO’s? Or maybe I’m simply rich enough and into BDSM? The answer is far more mundane: it comes down to what psychology calls delayed gratification.

So no, there’s nothing wrong with my self-preservation instinct. It’s just that after years in product management – unlike fruit flies, moths, or managers hopelessly clinging to their positions – mine now works on a timeline longer than “until the next paycheck.” What scares me most these days are horror stories where the real monster only shows up after 6 to 18 months. That’s exactly when we’d have to face the consequences of me yielding to the CEO.

Having seen products – and entire businesses – slip off course on rotten compromises, I’ve grown far less tolerant of them. I’ll write more about how our natural urge to be polite drags meetings toward suboptimal outcomes in “Apply Pressure” (coming soon). But not pissing in your boots is something more.

It’s holding the course under direct threat.
It’s acting against yourself, when your whole body tells you it’s easier to just smile like an idiot and follow the crowd.

A Simple Test

Avoiding an instinctive reaction to a stressor is unnatural. It requires self-awareness and control. According to the APA Dictionary of Psychology, the self-preservation instinct is a fundamental drive in humans and animals to engage in behaviors that help avoid injury and maximize the chance of survival. ❸ The dictionary also tells us that an instinctive reaction is one that is automatic, inborn, does not require learning – in other words, it’s immediate and involuntary. ❹

So don’t be mad at yourself if, after reading this, you realize that in some situation you couldn’t quite hold your bladder. To avoid guilt (and possible limb loss), my brain is almost constantly scanning office reality using a simple set of questions:

• Is the situation stressful?
  Is the stake high? Are interests in conflict? Can you sense the tension? If yes, move on to the next question.

• Will I gain an emotional benefit if I act in a certain way?
  Is there an easier choice? Is one option less painful? Will one of the possible reactions spare me discomfort, like admitting failure or straining a relationship? If yes, move on to the next question.

• Could the easier choice have negative consequences for me, the project, the product, the organization?
  Without sugarcoating – does the easier option stand a chance of being as productive as the alternatives? Are there strong arguments in its favor, apart from those tied to its emotional upside? Have the harder choices been rationally ruled out? If not – don’t take the easy way out. Make sure you’re not fooling yourself into pissing in your boots.

Every time you (consciously or not) picked the easiest option – I don’t feel sorry for you. Every time you put emotional comfort ahead of functional outcomes – you're asking for an amputation. And yes, I hear you: “I’ve got two kids in college, a mortgage, and I really like authentic Italian food. I can’t play the hard-headed rebel.” Fine. But let’s not kid ourselves that you’re doing it for performance. Your success lies in job security, day-to-day comfort, and pleasant workplace relations. Now go ahead – celebrate with another meatball.

Moments that Matter

Why does not pissing in your boots matter? Can’t you just, once in a while, pat your coworkers on the back? Swallow an “enlightened” idea from leadership that’s never even seen your app’s users in a photo? The problem is that in a surprisingly large number of cases – especially as managers – what we do at work sets standards. The standard of following the crowd. The standard of nodding along with the CEO. The standard of committing to delivery without proper refinement.

My colleague Karol, tech lead of one of the best teams I’ve ever worked with, once told me that when we first started collaborating, he thought I was aggressive. Only later – as he put it – he realized that I was simply setting clear boundaries from the start. I did it then, and I still do it now, because I believe very little that happens at work is free of long-term consequences.

And once boundaries are crossed, it’s very hard to restore them. If you show your team that changes can be made to the product without research, that position in the company can outweigh data, don’t be surprised when your product drifts away from user needs. At the same time, once you participate even once in a harmful practice, it becomes hard to stop it – doing so can make you seem inconsistent, or even hypocritical.

That’s why it’s better – whenever possible – not to piss in your boots.

The Most Pissed-in Boots in the World

For me, the main form of not pissing in your boots is avoiding technical debt. According to Ward Cunningham, technical debt is a metaphor for the future cost of work that results from choosing faster but less optimal technology solutions today. ❺ The concept was described long ago, in 1992 ❻ – and yet most organizations I know are drowning in it.

If that’s also the case in the company you’re working at now, then in the name of quick business gains your organization is most likely pissing in its boots on a daily basis.

I sincerely hope that while reading this, at least one situation came to mind when you ended up pissing in your boots. That’s completely natural. What matters is to reflect on why it happened, what emotions came with it, and then decide whether you prefer performance or meatballs. Both options have their pros and cons. Let me know what are your thoughts in the comments.

Sources & side notes

① Both quotes in this conversation are verbatim. Those things kind of stick with you.

② “User experience (UX) encompasses all aspects of the end-user's interaction with the company, its services, and its products.” – Norman, D., & Nielsen, J. (1998). The Definition of User Experience (UX). Source: Nielsen Norman Group

③ “Self-preservation instinct – the fundamental tendency of humans and animals to behave in ways that avoid injury and maximize survival.” – APA Dictionary of Psychology. Source: APA Dictionary of Psychology

④ “An automatic instinctive unlearned reaction to a stimulus.” – Vocabulary.com for “reflex.” Source: Vocabulary.com

⑤ Imagine you want to hang a mirror. To save time, instead of using two screws as per design, you hang it on one screw and a string stretched between two hinges on the back. That mirror won’t stay straight for long. Later, someone will have to take it down, cut the string, remove the central screw, install two new screws, patch the old hole and hang it again – or the mirror will fall. That’s what technical debt is.

⑥ “Technical debt is a metaphor referring to the eventual consequences of poor system design, software architecture, or software development within a codebase. If the debt is not repaid, it can accumulate ‘interest,’ making future changes more costly and difficult.” – Cunningham, W. (1992). The WyCash portfolio management system. OOPSLA ’92 Experience Report. Source: ACM Digital Library

I’d much rather be a bit bland – neutral like Switzerland, or one of those pH-balanced face cleansers. But instead of “pH 7” I’ve somehow earned a PhD in being blunt and polarizing. Apparently, I’m one of those people you either love or hate. So, by necessity, I became my own guinea pig – spending the past decade in management trying every trick in the book to deal with it. From my default setting of pragmatic, robot-grade charm, all the way to fanatical How to Win Friends and Influence People–style Carnegie experiments on real coworkers in real offices. ❶ The healthiest boundary I ever came across? It came from my boss, Jarek – while he was scolding me.

Why do companies pour so much into “team-building”? What are the two most common sources of conflict? And what should you not do if you don’t want to end up blaming yourself? Find out in this week’s Memo.

The Silver Fox

“Silver foxes” is a tongue-in-cheek term for managers who’ve already gone gray from years of corporate fun and games. The kind who’ve spent decades perfecting the skill of not getting turned into a fox-fur coat — and Jarek was one of them. Sharp, energetic, and terrifyingly pragmatic, he made it nearly impossible to guess his age.

Back in the 1990s, while Poland’s economy was still learning to crawl — headfirst down the ladder, wailing — Jarek was busy shaping his work ethic and honing his craft as a sales director on multimillion-dollar deals with American clients.

Now a content resident of the Polish version of the Hamptons – Sopot – he kept himself busy more as a hobby, running sales at a company just 500 meters from his house. It also happened to be where I worked. Reporting to Jarek turned out to be one of the best things that ever happened to me.

Bull in a China Shop

It was 2018, just before GDPR came into effect. That morning, Jarek stormed onto the open space without his usual “Hi everyone!” Instead, he marched straight across the floor and, without even looking at me, waved me into his corner office – affectionately nicknamed “the aquarium.”

Once inside, he sat down, took off his glasses, and laid them on the desk, rubbing his eyes – out of fatigue or disbelief. I was about to find out.

“Please,” he began, “tell me this isn’t true.”

My half-asleep brain scrambled through a mental list of things our teams had recently pulled off – the kind Jarek would definitely prefer not to be true. I was somewhere around item six when he sighed and added:

“Tell me it’s not true that we took the account manager’s contact info from our job board and spun up a brand new internal recruitment department for your teams – right here on our floor.”

Right. HR was just too slow for me. I was done playing broken telephone with candidates through them as middleman. I was writing the job ads myself anyway. Taking over the whole process and cutting down the back-and-forth just felt like the natural move.

To be honest, it didn’t even make the list I was still mentally assembling in that moment. I had all the corporate finesse of a bull in a china shop, so it never occurred to me that someone in HR might not love my brilliant plan to cut them out of ~half of their job.

The Rest Are to Be Friends

“HR will file an internal report that we violated candidate data protection procedures,” Jarek informed me.

“These procedures aren’t even in effect yet,” I pointed out.

“Yes. That’s true. You’re right. They aren’t.”

I was just about to turn on my heel and leave when he added:

“That’s exactly why tomorrow you’ll go to HR with flowers, apologize sincerely, tell them this was your biggest mistake, that you love working with them, and that it will never, ever happen again.”

I was dumbfounded. Why on earth should I apologize for streamlining a process — and doing part of their job for them?!

“Michał,” Jarek said slowly, in the tone of someone explaining a basic fact of life to a not-very-gifted Labrador

• “some people won’t like us because it’s in their interest,

• some people won’t like us just because,

• and that’s why the whole point is: the rest are to be friends.”

Two Sides of Conway’s Law

Even though they don’t have to stay that way, workplace relationships — at least at the beginning — are synthetic, functional in nature. Conway’s Law ❷, which I also reference in the piece “Respect the Status Quo” (coming soon), works both ways: not only (1) do organizations design systems that mirror their own structure, but also (2) the structure of an organization — meaning the relationships inside it — must fit the tasks it carries out.

That’s why, no — it’s not really up to you, as a hiring manager, whether you like Betty from HR or want to work with her. Getting along with Betty from HR — required by the company’s structure — is part of your job, part of the task. If the quality of that communication is average, your results and their evaluation will be average too. Companies, aware of this, try to support relationships by organizing team-building opportunities. But in the end, as much as possible, maintaining healthy relationships with coworkers — especially along functional lines — is your obligation, completely independent of your personal taste in people.

How Nice Is Too Nice?

Jarek’s advice, luckily, came with two safety valves — two reality checks:

• It normalizes the fact that some people simply won’t like us because their interests conflict with ours. People are pragmatic, and it’s hard to defend those kinds of relationships on social grounds. ❸

• It allows for purely personal clashes. Unless you’re a card-carrying member of the mutual admiration society, your team was built for function, not personal chemistry — so friction will happen.

What I value is that Jarek suggested writing these off as a cost of doing business, instead of chasing the impossible goal of winning over absolutely everyone. That helped me avoid unnecessary emotional toll — in that job, and in the ones that followed.

I also read in his advice a kind of permission: not to expect myself to genuinely like people who sabotage my efforts, or whose style and attitude I find unbearable. Jarek’s point wasn’t about being fake or cynical. It was about pragmatic professionalism — and avoiding conflict everywhere it’s not natural or necessary.

So how do you treat relationships at work? Do you take every one to heart, or do you let the occasional bad fit roll off you? Do you agree with Jarek’s advice, or do you approach it differently?

Drop me a note — I’d love to hear how you draw your own boundaries.

Sources & side notes

① Carnegie, D. (1936). How to Win Friends and Influence People. New York: Simon & Schuster

② Conway, M. (1968). How Do Committees Invent? Datamation, Vol. 14, No. 4. melconway.com

③ Interestingly, years later François Nuyts, then CEO of Allegro, shared a similar observation with me: that we often, almost unintentionally, tend to like coworkers who consistently “deliver” and can be relied on — and that this reliability also strengthens the social dimension of the relationship.

f we work at the same company and you need to send me an email – something has gone seriously wrong. Here’s why I think it’s time to ditch internal epistolography altogether.

I stopped reading internal email in 2017 – 1 pandemic and ~3 employers ago. Almost. It's not that my inbox is lonely. I’m a Product Director – 100+ messages crash-land there every 24 hours, Valentine’s Day or not. I'm sure the same thing happens in yours. ❶ And, same as for you, most of them add zero value – for me, my team, or our product. ❷

So why do we still cling to a tool that’s about as efficient as state socialism? Especially when we replaced it ages ago? And how can you (at least partly) break out of this vicious circle?

The 7 Deadly Sins of Internal Email

Sending an email outside the company can feel stressful; shooting one to even a huge list of coworkers is as easy as peeling a banana. That very human impulse – plus a few purely technical quirks – gives us seven deadly sins of internal email:

1. Static content – Once an email (or its attachment) is sent, you can’t update it, which leads straight to…

2. Message atomisation – Like a furious ping-pong rally, even the rare “constructive” threads splatter fragments of information across dozens of replies. New messages often invalidate the old ones, creating contradictions.

3. Low bar for senders and recipients – Anyone in the company can email you. No expertise, no permissions needed – just an address book access and a heart full of malice. There’s also no access control for e-mails: you can’t link to an email, and sharing the information means forwarding it again, which triggers…

4. Forward-itis – The modern plague of “you forgot to add John”, “sorry, this wasn’t meant for everyone”, “CC-ing you just FYI”, or “all the context is in this [two-year] thread”. The trick here is shifting the work of crafting a clear message from the sender to the unlucky reader.

5. Format mismatch – Email is for messaging, not knowledge storage. With zero internal structure, every author invents a new layout. Noise piles up – greetings, sign-offs, mile-long GDPR footers – while purpose-built collaboration features (rich formatting, macros, live updates, visualisations, summaries) simply don’t exist.

6. No context – Even if an email is (a) threaded, (b) filtered into folders, and (c) sent through mailing lists, the inbox stays fundamentally flat. Each new thread lands on the same endless pile; nothing is anchored to a project, task, or team

7. Communication drag – Thanks to all of the above, we write and read emails more slowly, need more words to get things done, and achieve weaker results. Quality can sink without limit – an opportunity our colleagues seem to grab faster than free company fruit on Tuesdays.

The list above is still open – I’d love even more creative slams on internal email in the comments. But how do you escape the evil? How do I manage to check email only once a week and still be considered tolerable by the team? The answer is simple.

How to bury internal emails?

Sometimes our lives go through long-term changes that demand self-awareness, commitment, and discipline. Ditching internal emails is not one of them. In my case, it happened spontaneously and almost by itself, and the last nail in the coffin was adding a knowledge base (Confluence) to our company toolset. For the DIY enthusiasts – the whole coffin looks roughly like this:

Using the right mix of tools and meetings turns internal email from the default into a faux pas. It lets internal email take its rightful place in hell – right next to leaving someone a voicemail, planning projects in PowerPoint, and Judas. The system basically runs itself. Some folks dress it up on their résumé as “a proactive approach to communication,” but to me it’s just "common sense":

1. meetings – default length is 30 minutes; the need to communicate emerges over time; I sync with my team every day; with the people who’ll get fired if I miss the deadline – every two weeks; with the people who will be firing them – once a quarter,

2. chat – if your need to talk is urgent and rare, ping me in chat: less noise, faster turnaround, and we can pull more people in if needed,

3. knowledge base for tasks ("task tracker”) – e.g. Jira, Trello – enter the task details once and the system notifies the requester, the assignee, and everyone in between – all at once,

4. analytics dashboard – if your communication need is cyclical and passive, and about results rather than the work itself, I can probably serve the data to you passively and automatically,

5. knowledge base for facts (“documentation”) – e.g. Notion, Confluence – if your question isn’t about the work or its outcomes but is still legit, odds are you’re not the only one who needs the answer: instructions, troubleshooting guides, and reference material land in the docs ahead of time.

Looking at the above, if we work at the same company and you still have to email me, something has gone seriously wrong. I either failed to share some fact or task detail up front, or maybe you only think you need/deserve to know something. Either way, we can usually clear it up faster than a TikTok trend. We toss in a status update/chat/task/dashboard/document and move on. It's clean and efficient. It’s Friday, 5:01 p.m. We’re all “one step ahead of the competition,” and “the money practically prints itself.” So, are internal emails totally dead? Not quite.

Internal Emails Strike Back

While statistically 70% of internal emails ❸ are pure spam, the rest are absolutely essential and deserve pride of place in our inboxes and hearts. The list is open, but I’d single out:

• legal notices (e.g., HR updates, offers) – the plain, transactional nature of an email promotes accountability, and courts around the globe already treat it as standard evidence ❹❺;

• escalations and CYA (“cover-your-ass”) emails – culturally, and probably for the same legal reason, email is often “the last resort” and “for real”; we use it to confirm what was decided in a meeting or chat; as long as it’s summarising, not substituting project docs, it’ll do;

• technical notices sent to service customers – no matter how "state-of-the-art" your service mesh is, the only thing I trust is a hard-wired rule: subscribe the client-team alias to the service-owner’s mailing list and fire off a good old email notice every time we plan a change (or an apology if we’ve already deployed it); everything else fails.

Ultimately, it all boils down to work culture. I’m no saint, but still – given that it’s 2025 – forwarding an email thread without a summary, or blasting a year-long project plan to 30 people in a static Excel file, feels… downright gross.

If you feel the same, forward this piece to the desk-mate who’s raging at company spam with you, or use it as a veiled hint for the nearest “Reply-all” fan.

Cutting yourself off from corporate spam is a gamble you take at your own risk, but trust me – it doesn’t have to hurt. Let me know how your email-taming quest is going; we all face this problem, and I’d love to hear your take in the comments.

Sources

① Average employee receives approximately 121 emails per day. Venngage. (2023). 25 Key Email Statistics Defining the Modern Email Landscape. Venngage. Consensus

② 43% of employees feel that internal communications are ineffective, leading to misunderstandings. ProofHub. (2024). What is Internal Communication? A Guide for Organizations.

③ Only 30% of emails received are important or require immediate action. Global News. (2017). This is how much time you spend on work emails every day, according to a Canadian survey.

④ 85% of U.S. corporations were involved in litigation where emails served as key evidence in 2019. Symantec. (2019). Internet Security Threat Report, Volume 24.

⑤ 70% of civil cases involving businesses dealt with email communication in 2019. NinjaOne. (2019). Small Business Cyber Security Statistics.

Everyone on the team has their own role, and you don’t have to play them all. Here’s how to grow and delegate effectively in a world where the “complete player” doesn’t exist and aiming for the “golden mean” would only lead to mediocrity.

Straddling the line between childhood growing pains and modern lifestyle diseases is a mindset that still torments many young—sometimes only young-at-heart—managers and specialists: the conviction that they already possess, or could quickly acquire, all-encompassing knowledge.

And so right up there with the Yeti, the Loch Ness Monster, and the fabled “complete footballer,” we find the myth of the boss-owner-founder who could knock out every task—if only there were a few extra hours in the day.

This attitude kills real delegation and outsourcing, strangles team growth, and stalls your own skill development. Ironically, the more “reasonable” it feels, the more harm it does. A Malcolm Gladwell keynote and a stint at “Brand Strategy School” cured me of a severe case of this syndrome back in 2017. I highly recommend both.

Read on to learn how to diagnose yourself, recognize the symptoms and consequences, and treat even the toughest cases of managerial omnipotence.

Every Pro Has Its Cons

Skill-wise, the “complete player” simply doesn’t exist. That has nothing to do with a lack of talent, your own limits, or not trying hard enough. It’s just the logical outcome of the fact that the traits, skills, and mindsets that matter at work often clash with one another.

Picture it this way: if you’ve ever compared athletes in a sports video game, you probably saw a radar chart like the one below.

The core problem in the real world is that along each of these axes you can plot two qualities. Each could be useful in your work, yet they are mutually exclusive. To illustrate, here’s the custom set of traits I use to judge candidates for manager roles in my teams.

If, after fully understanding the above, you still think you could land on both sides of any axis—congrats on your first job, or best of luck with your speedy resocialization! Dear, you can’t be both “bold” and “cautious,” just like you can’t be both “egalitarian” and “hierarchical.” Even if you manage to be both “technical” and “business-minded,” day-to-day reality makes you pick one stance eventually. That’s why there’s no such thing as a true jack-of-all-trades, and every strength comes with a weakness.

Delegate Through Awe

When, as a young manager, I enrolled in the 16th edition of the Brand Strategy School back in 2017, I didn’t have a shred of humility in me. I rolled into the capital from provincial North, proudly flashing my badge as the youngest manager at my then-company. I swaggered into Agora’s headquarters—where the workshops were held—with a stick shoved so far up my backside that its tip poked out through my nose holding it high, with the other end neatly trimmed just so it wouldn’t clatter against the chairs.

For the next 10 months, every 2 weeks, I worked with a group of about 30 talented marketers, digging into all facets of marketing and brand strategy. At every turn, someone outshone me at something. The quiet ones — more empathetic than I am and better at research. The friendly ones — able to team up with a wider range of people than my polarizing persona ever could. The cautious ones — eager to drill down to the core insight while I’d already be wrestling with a flawed rollout. And Bartek — don’t even get me started on Bartek.

For each exercise we were shuffled into different groups and judged by experts. I quickly realized my best play was to get into the group with the widest mix of traits—people who outclassed me in as many ways as possible. Where self-doubt and my fragile ego had once camped, a calculated, slightly cynical awe—fed by quiet observation—moved in. That’s how, even though I’m pretty handy with Adobe Illustrator myself, my long-standing collaboration with Tomek Pilch of Blürbstudio began. Its very first product was the most beautiful pitch deck I’ve ever had to defend; you can admire one of its slides above.

Collective Genius

It probably wouldn’t have been nearly as easy had Malcolm Gladwell’s talk not landed in my hands around that time. Using the example of 2 landmark discoveries, Gladwell explores the value that comes from individual versus collective genius. You’ll find the full talk below.

Watch on newyorker.com

My own experience, combined with Gladwell’s insights, shaped my thinking about the value of solo versus team work—and about how to guide both personal and team development—in two key ways:

First—today you’re better off being a narrow-field specialist with a broad overview than a pure generalist. McKinsey calls this profile the “T-shaped professional”.

Second—unless you’re tackling a simple, one-track problem that needs no elaborate solution—just a string of quick, straightforward decisions—the challenges of the modern workplace are best solved by a team rather than alone.

Clone Wars

Even if we agree on the value of collective genius, a trap still waits—the “self-hugging” bias. It shows up in our tendency to rate people who share our own personality traits more favorably. ❶ This is how homogeneous teams—full of near-clones—form instead of heterogeneous ones that mix people with different skills or traits.

Studies show that, under pressure, heterogeneous teams finish complex tasks 25% faster than homogeneous teams. ❷ At the same time, they make decisions 40% more slowly than internally uniform teams, yet with 50% fewer errors. ❸ Their solutions are 30% more innovative, but—unfortunately, despite that edge in complex work—they carry a 25% higher risk of delays. ❹ My favorite study of climbing teams found that diverse groups reached the summit with a 35% higher probability, but endured 20% more internal conflicts along the way. ❺ And in software work alone, homogeneous teams were 60% more prone to simple coding errors. ❻

Bottom line: a heterogeneous team gives us the richest pool of collective genius, but—as the data show—it isn’t a cure-all. In software, homogeneous teams seem better for Kanban-style maintenance, while diverse teams shine when building new functionality from scratch in Scrum. Still, in nearly every field today, you’re smarter playing as a team—a lesson the cheesy movie clip below drives home every time I roll it out.

Sources

① “Self-hugging is a cognitive bias where individuals seek in others the qualities they believe about themselves, leading to a tendency to favor those who are similar to them. This bias can impact interpersonal evaluations and social relationships by creating an inflated perception of individuals who share similar attributes or beliefs.” Brewer, M., & Gardner, W. (1996). Who is this “we”? Levels of collective identity and self-representations. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 71(1), 83–93. Source: SpringerLink.

② "Heterogeneous teams completed complex tasks 25% faster than homogeneous teams, especially under high-pressure conditions." Bradley, B. H., Postlethwaite, B. E., Klotz, A. C., Hamdani, M. R., & Brown, K. G. (2012). Reaping the benefits of task conflict in teams: The critical role of team psychological safety climate. Journal of Applied Psychology, 97(1), 151-158. Source: PsycNet.

③ "Teams with high diversity showed a 40% reduction in decision-making speed due to increased deliberation, but were 50% less likely to make errors." van Knippenberg, D., & Schippers, M. C. (2007). Work group diversity. Annual Review of Psychology, 58, 515-541. Source: Annual Reviews.

④ "Functional diversity in engineering teams led to a 30% improvement in project innovation but caused a 25% increase in project delays." Dahlin, K. B., Weingart, L. R., & Hinds, P. J. (2005). Team diversity and information use. Academy of Management Journal, 48(6), 1107-1123. Source: Academy of Management Journal.

⑤ "Diverse mountaineering teams were 35% more likely to reach the summit compared to homogeneous teams, but experienced 20% more intra-team conflicts." Anicich, E. M., Swaab, R. I., & Galinsky, A. D. (2015). Hierarchical cultural values predict success and mortality in high-stakes teams. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 112(5), 1338-1343. Source: PNAS.

⑥ "Homogeneous teams in software development completed tasks 15% faster but had a 60% higher rate of overlooking bugs due to shared assumptions." Loyd, D. L., Wang, C. S., Phillips, K. W., & Lount Jr, R. B. (2013). Social category diversity promotes premeeting elaboration: The role of relationship focus. Organization Science, 24(3), 757-772. Source: INFORMS PubsOnline.

If you have to buy something, check prices with at least two suppliers. Here’s how the law of diminishing returns plays out at 2 a.m. on the train station in the middle of nowhere.

I’ve got a few distinctive traits – like being an even 2 meters tall (about 6.7) or a voice that could pass for a hammer drill. When I became a manager in early 2015, I was also a textbook dumb-ass – full of the self-confidence and drive common to those of my kind. Whatever has changed since then is thanks only to the people I met along the way and the simple truths they managed to drill into me. One of those people was Maciej, and one of those truths is the one about the “second cab.”

How do you keep from getting ripped off when it’s time to buy something? Where’s the bare-minimum analysis you should run? How does a seasoned banking consultant make those calls?

The Worst Kind of Consultant

Maciej was a former consultant, a stocky guy full of energy and tact. He always wore a shirt, which was always tucked into trousers, which were always held up by a belt – an upstanding citizen. Although he’d only recently joined our firm, in general he was probably working longer than I’d been alive. “When a bank has a nasty job to do,” he explained, “they hire the Big Four consultants. When the job is so nasty that even the Big Four invoke a conscience clause, they call independent ones." And that’s exactly what Maciej had been for the previous ~20 years – "the worst kind of consultant", as he put it.

We were driving to a conference at some hotel on the outskirts of Warsaw. The 2.2-liter diesel in the company Ford was howling at a speed that made it obvious we weren’t the ones paying for the maintenance. As the senior colleague, somewhere near the A1 entrance Maciej temporarily adopted me and now he was lecturing – plainly, with no puffery – about the job. Meanwhile, still totally green, I was experimenting with my latest discovery in management and human relations – I shut up and listened. The payoff came quickly: it was then that Maciej told me what, after closer study, turned out to be the best, most pragmatic take on the “law of diminishing returns” in analytics I’ve ever encountered.

Check the Other Cab

“If you’re in a strange city at 2 a.m. and need to get back to your hotel” – said Maciej – “don’t hop into the first cab you see, because they might rip you off. Don’t waste time checking every cab either – you don’t have that kind of time. Always call two cabs.

• If one fare is much higher than the other – you know it was a scam.

• If both fares are roughly the same – you know that’s just the going rate.

• A third or any later cab probably won’t change much – go get some sleep.”

Thanks to Uber and Bolt, the risk of getting cheated by a blood-thirsty street-side hustler outside the station is far lower today. Yet the universal lesson Maciej shared with me still applies whenever you have to decide fast with little time for analysis. Two independent data points from the same pool have a decent chance of representing the whole set. Relying on just one point means no analysis at all. Looking at three or more points is (sometimes) a luxury. The arbitrary threshold Maciej illustrated with taxis is two data samples.

The Law of Diminishing Returns and Information Gain in Analysis

The law of diminishing returns says that:

• When you keep increasing one input (e.g., ringing up more taxi companies)

• while holding every other factor constant (e.g., it’s still 2 a.m. in the middle of nowhere)

• in pursuit of the best outcome (e.g., picking the quickest to get, best-priced cab)

• …you eventually reach a point where adding even more of that input no longer raises your payoff – payoff actually starts to fall. ❶

Even though this rule is one of the basic laws of economics – every sneaker producer or onion grower knows it – seeing it applied to analysis felt fresher than anything the mentioned two could ever supply.

Over time I realised that Maciej’s taxi story is a textbook example of what information theory and machine learning call “information gain.” According to the Neyman–Pearson lemma ❷❸, said gain not only follows the law of diminishing returns but does so (a) exactly as the sample’s probabilities dictate and (b) with results that grow on a logarithmic scale.

The difference? You can explain Maciej’s rule in a roaring 2011 Ford doing 130 km/h on a freeway while eating a McWrap – those other theorems, not so much. 

When to Use the “Two-Cabs” Rule?

In practice, “check the other cab” has become one of my go-to requests. I pull it out whenever my team and I know little or nothing about something today but want to look informed and confident in about a week, tops. Here are 3 real-world examples of its use:

1. Choosing a log-management tool (this year) – We were ready to go with an ELK-as-a-Service setup, but to be safe we’re also running a Grafana Loki POC, so we have at least 2 data points.

2. Rebuilding the team (last year) – We kept each hiring track open until we had at least 2 candidates in the second round for every role, just for comparison.

3. Picking a new contract (this life) – After landing the first offer that satisfied me, I still finished another interview process to double-check how the market valued my skills. In the end, Allegro offered me more take-home on a standard employment contract (UoP) than the competition on a B2B deal.

Know any other golden rules that show up in analysis? I’d love your comments and links – especially the one time you couldn’t check a “second cab” and how it ended. If you think any of this might help you someday, drop “Thanks Maciej!” in the comments. The original Maciej already has a link to this article and will be thrilled to see it.

Sources

① Law of diminishing returns

② Kullback–Leibler divergence

③ Lemat Neymana-Pearsona