A one-way door decision is one you can't walk back through. A two-way door decision is one you can. The CEO's job is the one-way doors, and almost everything else belongs to the team.
The idea comes from Jeff Bezos. In his 2016 shareholder letter he split every decision into those two types.
A two-way door: if you're not happy with the choice, you walk back through it.
A one-way door: it isn't reversible, so you take your time and you get it right.
When Bezos stepped down as Amazon's CEO and became Executive Chairman, the point was to step back from the day-to-day and keep his focus on the one-way doors.
What does a two-way door look like?
Hiring a junior account executive who doesn't work out. It's a cost, and it's reversible, and it doesn't need the CEO.
The same is true of thousands of decisions a business makes every month.
What does a one-way door look like?
The high-level calls that set the direction and the outcome of the company. Whether to make an acquisition. Whether to take the company public.
Once you've made those, the business operates differently, and you can't simply undo it if it doesn't work out. They need time and thought, and they shouldn't be made lightly.
Why does this matter as you scale?
Because trying to make every decision isn't sustainable.
There comes a point where you can't grow without building a team, and that means handing the two-way door decisions to people who are qualified to make them without you. Delegate the two-way door decisions, and let your leadership team practise making decisions. That's how you strategically replace yourself.
Bezos warns about confusing the two. Treat every decision like a one-way door and you get, in his words, "slowness, unthoughtful risk aversion, failure to experiment sufficiently, and consequently diminished invention."
The one thing to do this week
List every decision that came to you this week. Mark each one as a one-way or a two-way door. Then hand two of the two-way doors to the person who should own them, and tell them you won't be checking.
If you want to work out which doors are yours, book a 25-minute Growth Plan call.
