“Some decisions are consequential and irreversible… one-way doors… these decisions must be made methodically, carefully, slowly… But most decisions aren't like that – they are changeable, reversible – they're two-way doors… Type 2 decisions can and should be made quickly…”
Two-Way Doors
From Jeff Bezos’s 2015 Letter to Shareholders (Amazon, 2016).
The framework is one-sided, and the letter is explicit about why. Bezos’s diagnosis after the excerpt is that large organizations default to the heavy-weight Type 1 process on most decisions, including many Type 2 ones; the result is “slowness, unthoughtful risk aversion, failure to experiment sufficiently, and consequently diminished invention.” The footnote tied to that passage names the other half: “The opposite situation is less interesting and there is undoubtedly some survivorship bias. Any companies that habitually use the light-weight Type 2 decision-making process to make Type 1 decisions go extinct before they get large.” The only failure mode worth writing about is the one large companies are still alive to make.