Use leadership reviews to get principles, not (just) answers

How many times have you been in a brainstorm or jam session and heard someone say “Let’s take this idea to a leadership review! That way we’ll get the answer asap!”

And that makes sense! Leadership reviews are great for unblocking teams quickly. Especially in the early days of a product when we’re still finding product-market fit, hearing directly from the single leader in charge of the team or company is invaluable. It helps us make quick decisions across an entire product area that will feel consistent to customers, and means we can build and pivot fast.

But after we have product-market fit and generally know the path forward, relying on reviews for every decision can actually slow things down. Can’t you just feel how much the momentum slows down when you have to waste time scheduling and preparing for unnecessary meetings?

Instead, we can accelerate our pace by using those reviews to build principles. That way the team can make fast decisions without even needing a meeting next time.

That means asking questions in reviews like:

1. Is our principle here to optimize for Y users over Z users? Or B timeline instead of C timeline?

2. Should we default to always doing X unless it interferes with Y, like we’re doing here?

3. In the future, can we skip product review for this kind of problem? Or would you like us to come back for each decision?

This kind of calibration has helped our teams stay fast even as a product matures. Early on, I might run daily or weekly standups with the CEO to make sure we’re aligned and unblocked. But as the team builds confidence in what’s working for customers, we can align with leadership on a few core principles and let the team run. The team can make quick autonomous decisions themselves, and we can get more done across the entire team.

I’ve found this not only creates more capacity in teams, it also creates more leaders — because as our decision-making principles get clearer, we can empower more people to step up knowing that we’ll build consistently across the board. And of course, our customers get the benefit of quicker, faster improvements.