How deliberately do you use decision rules?

How do you make decisions in a transformation? Are you deliberate on what type of decision rules to use for what type of decision? There are several decision rules a leadership team can use.

In my experience, if not explicitly managed, teams tend to gravitate to a certain rule, such as consensus, for example. This might be good for more complex decisions where the full buy-in is needed but can unnecessarily slow down less complex and specific decisions.

Thinking through how decisions are made in different meetings can be a powerful way to accelerate transformations. For instance, delegating more standard decisions or occasionally making spontaneous decisions on less important topics creates room to build consensus on buying of more complex ones.

Each person and team has only so much decision power. I like the example of Obama, who mentioned that he always wore similar types of suites and clothes during his presidency. He didn’t want to waste decision bandwidth in the morning on what to wear, as he needed it for more important decisions during the day.

What has worked best in your experience? Switching between rules? Using certain rules for certain problems?