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Everything that a business commits resources to is, essentially a bet, so it's important that you make the right bets.  It's also important to make those bets, in as many cases as you possibly can, small. 

More small bets beats a few big bets.  Then you double down on the winners.

This kind of thinking has led Amazon to become the powerhouse that it is today.  Jeff Bezos famously said, "Our success at Amazon is a function of how many experiments we do per year, per month, per week, per day…."  More experiments = more successes.  Making experiments fast and easy is essential to running more experiments.

Since I want our bets to be strategic, easy, fast, and cheap, I’ve developed the following framework that I run through when facing a decision:

1. Ask "What would this look like if it were easy?"
2. How do we try this in a way that’s fast and cheap?
3. Sleep on it


What would this look like if it were easy?

I learned this question from Tim Ferris’ books, and I'm amazed how powerfully it changes your perspective.  It's so tempting to jump right into the weeds of an idea.  But asking this questions makes you take a step back and think at a higher level.


How do we try this in a way that’s fast and cheap?

This question is related to the first question, but I find it useful to explicitly ask if it can be executed in a fast and cheap way.   By cheap, in a tech company, we usually mean "How can we do this without a big development cycle."  So the “easy” way often leads to buying a solution or hacking together a "NoCode" solution just to try the idea (which, after proven to work then justifies a development cycle.)


Sleep on it

More and more, I'm finding that I make much better decisions if I don't rush into them.  I seed my mind with the first two questions, and then let the ideas kind of percolate in my mind.  The thoughts generally run the gamut from "Do we need to do this it at all?" to "Who can we partner with to get it done?" to "Maybe we do need to build it ourselves.".  I find thinking it over generally results in a much clearer and better decision.  Bigger decisions I often consider for a few days.  This is an example of how you must sometimes slow down to go faster.

Next time you face a big decision, I encourage you to give this framework a try.

How can you apply this concept in your own business?