maciej łebkowski
Maciej Łebkowski

How to ask your boss to make a decision

in Professional

If you need someone to make a decision for you (not necessarily your superior) try to follow these rules:

  1. Explain the situation to them. The context is crucial to making the right choice.
  2. List all available options.
  3. Describe the criteria for weighing your options.
  4. Evaluate each solution in context of those criteria.
  5. Make your recommendation.

This way all the other person has to do is make the decision. This may include their wider knowledge, their position or gut feeling. It should take them an instant.

The most common problem is that instead of asking for a decision, you are really asking to do your job for you: to make your research, to think about the solutions, to evaluate them. Don’t waste other people’s time with your shit. Your decision question can never be open ended: „so what do you think”, „how should I do that”. Put some effort in it and you’ll get a great feedback.

And the most common answer to your question should be „yes” (or you’re doing something wrong).

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About the author

My name is Maciej Łebkowski. I’m a full stack software engineer, a writer, a leader, and I play board games in my spare time. I’m currently in charge of the technical side of a new project called Docplanner Phone.

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. This means that you may use it for commercial purposes, adapt upon it, but you need to release it under the same license. In any case you must give credit to the original author of the work (Maciej Łebkowski), including a URI to the work.