How to Put an End to Never-Ending Product Debates, But Still Get Everyone's Input
The "Option 1, Option 2" Framework
When you’re building a new product, you constantly have to decide which features to build, when to build them, and how to build them. However, when it comes to making these decisions, teams often fall into two failure modes — The Never-Ending Debate mode or The “Yes Team” mode. To make matters worse, remote work only exacerbates both failure modes.
Failure Mode 1: The Never-Ending Debate
First, you should be glad that your team has an open atmosphere where team members are comfortable sharing their opinions. However, the never-ending debates will leave your team exhausted and stressed out as little is getting done.
The endless debates are a drain on the team’s energy, and before you know it, the day is done. The backlog hasn’t gotten any smaller. To make matters worse, heated and lengthy debates are difficult to manage. With strong personalities, it’s very easy for discussions to turn into debates, and for debates to turn into arguments that get personal. In a remote work setting, this failure mode can be especially bad because you lack the in-person interaction that humanizes people.
Failure Mode 2: The “Yes Team”
Leaders who find themselves in this failure mode have the opposite problem. In this failure mode, the leader or one vocal member of the group is always proposing ideas, and the new ideas are always met with approval from the team. There may be some discussion, but it is largely around the details and rarely substantive.
The “yes team” problem is that you risk making sub-optimal decisions because dissenting information isn’t being shared. Especially for early-stage startups, consistently ignoring reality, is very dangerous because you don’t have consistent revenues to pad mistakes. This is known as groupthink.
Groupthink is a phenomenon that occurs when a group of well-intentioned people make irrational or non-optimal decisions spurred by the urge to conform or the believe that dissent is impossible. The problematic or premature consensus that is characteristic of groupthink may be fueled by a particular agenda — or it may be due to group members valuing harmony and coherence above critical thought.
Remote work encourages this failure mode because the friction of communication is higher: you need to unmute yourself, deliberately make your point, and then have an awkward debate over Zoom. The spontaneous water cooler conversations where it’s easy to pull people aside and share concerns don’t happen easily in a remote environment.
A great technique to avoid both failure modes is the “Option 1, Option 2” framework. It’s dead simple, but still very powerful — here’s how to use it.
The Option 1, Option 2 Framework
Step 1: List Options
As soon as there is clearly more than one obvious solution to a problem, start verbally labeling them as Option 1, 2, 3, etc. The labeling of options numerically is critical because otherwise, the options are labeled “Stephanie’s idea” or “Gurjit’s idea” by default. With egos tied to decisions, people are no longer advocating for the decision based on the best available information but rather defending their own ego. The simple chart below shows what this could look like.
Note: If you tend towards the “Yes Team” failure mode and the team is avoiding being critical, a simple way to kickstart a discussion is by providing another competing option and asking which option is better to solicit analysis.
Step 2: Add Pros and Cons
If a short verbal discussion doesn’t unveil a clear winner, move to a spreadsheet that is being screen shared or a whiteboard (if in-person). Add a description column and list the pros and cons of each option. It’s not uncommon that the best option is now obvious at this point. The simple act of listing pros and cons has a way of forcing the cream to rise to the top.
Step 3: Add Questions
If listing pros and cons still doesn’t unveil a winner, consider that more information should be gathered before deciding. Add a questions column to start figuring out what additional information is needed. In the above example, once you’ve identified that the user’s need or lack thereof for context is the driving factor, you could conduct some interviews or look at past analytics to determine if that is the case.
Other Benefits
Another advantage of this approach is that it helps get team buy-in. It’s easy for the loudest and most articulate person to dominate product decisions. With this approach, everyone has an opportunity to get their idea out, see it recognized by the group, and actively participate in the jury.
Even if their idea isn’t selected, they are more likely to feel like their idea was heard and fairly evaluated. If they don’t feel heard or felt like the process was unfair, they are more likely to harbor resentment. As Y Combinator’s Michel Seibel puts it:
“You’d be surprised at how much value there is in seeing your idea on the board. Not everyone’s going to get to have built what they want to have built, but the fact that your ideas was considered and added to the board actually makes people feel a lot better.”
Don’t waste time on unimportant decisions
One additional consideration is a decision’s impact. The amount of effort put into making a decision should tightly correlate with a decision’s impact. Founders should always keep this in mind during a decision-making process. Ensure the team isn’t arguing about re-arranging deck chairs on the Titanic or, conversely, failing to scrutinize impactful decisions.
For some decisions, a quick verbal listing of options may make sense, while in others, taking the time to write the options down may make more sense. For example, Amazon uses a decision’s reversibility to measure how much effort should be put into evaluating it.
Key Takeaways
Product teams are constantly making product decisions. However, it’s easy to fall into the never-ending debate failure mode or the “yes team” failure mode. These failure modes are especially exacerbated by remote work.
The “Option 1, Option 2” Framework is a simple but effective way to avoid both failure modes. It involves listing out all available options and their pros and cons. If necessary, list out questions to go and collect more data.
This process also encourages group buy-in by allowing everyone to feel like their opinion has been heard.
Lastly, the time spent discussing a decision should always be correlated with its impact. Don’t waste time on decisions that don’t matter or overlook decisions that do.