Fast, high-quality decisions and approvals are the lifeblood of organizations. And if you've ever worked in development or construction, you know that there are a lot of decisions and approvals — some small, some big — but all of which can delay and hurt a project. Ultimately, the objective is to achieve both high-quality and high-velocity decisions. But how?

Very broadly speaking, you want a bias toward action and progress. How this plays out might depend on the specific situation at hand, but here's one technique that we try to use whenever possible. I call it (as of 30 seconds ago) the "default-to-yes" principle. It works well for approvals and reviews, and it is very common in construction.

All you need are two things: (1) a date by which something needs to be reviewed or approved and (2) a default yes. A default yes means that if I don't hear from you by the deadline established by (1), I'm simply going to assume your answer is yes and move on. Consent is implied unless you object.

The opposite of this is a "default-to-no" approach, which means things get stuck until someone gets around to reviewing or approving the thing. That's far less optimal because there's no outer limit to how long something might take. With the default-to-yes approach, I know progress will happen no later than X days from now.

This is just one specific technique, and I'm not suggesting it will work for all decisions and approvals, but there's significant value in high velocity. And to achieve that, you want a deeply ingrained cultural bias toward action.

Cover photo by Rubén Bagüés on Unsplash