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Many decisions growth marketers make on a daily basis include an element of uncertainty. When faced with such decisions, the question becomes, should you make the decision quickly on your own, or should you take your time and involve others?
One-way v two-way door decisions
When it comes to decision making Jeff Bezos uses the analogy of one-way door and two-way door decisions, which he explained in his 2016 letter to shareholders as below:
Some decisions are consequential and irreversible or nearly irreversible – one-way doors – and these decisions must be made methodically, carefully, slowly, with great deliberation and consultation. If you walk through and don’t like what you see on the other side, you can’t get back to where you were before. We can call these Type 1 decisions.
But most decisions aren’t like that – they are changeable, reversible – they’re two-way doors. If you’ve made a suboptimal Type 2 decision, you don’t have to live with the consequences for that long. You can reopen the door and go back through. Type 2 decisions can and should be made quickly by high judgment individuals or small groups.
As organisations get larger, there seems to be a tendency to use the heavy-weight Type 1 decision-making process on most decisions, including many Type 2 decisions. The end result of this is slowness, unthoughtful risk aversion, failure to experiment sufficiently, and consequently diminished invention.
Jeff explains this concept in more detail on the Lex Friedman podcast in early 2024, a video extract is show below.
A simple decision-making framework
Most marketing decisions are two-way door (type 2 decisions) - we are rarely making irreversible decisions in the same way that may exist for building architecture design, data storage solutions and M&A teams.
| One-way door (Type 1) | Two-way door (Type 2) | |
|---|---|---|
| Reversibility | Hard or impossible to reverse | Easy to reverse |
| If you get it wrong | Lasting, long-term effects | Short-lived, low cost to undo |
| Right pace | Slow down and consider carefully | Execute the decision quickly |
| Stakes | Significant & important | Less impactful |
| Decision weight | Heavy-weight decisions | Lightweight decisions |
| Who should decide | Teams, committees, senior leaders | Single individuals or small groups |
The vast majority of your work as a growth professional - new tools, processes, UI and UX changes, ads, content and creative decisions - are almost certainly two-way door decisions and should be made quickly.
Takeaways for Growth Marketers
Two-way doors provide opportunities to experiment, learn and iterate at speed. Growth teams must embrace this agility and avoid deliberating on such decisions. A minimum viable test is often the fastest way to turn a two-way door into a quick, low-risk decision, and a prioritisation framework can help you decide which two-way doors are worth walking through first.
A good plan, violently executed now, is better than a perfect plan next week. General George Patton
Through experimentation - by starting small, iterating, improving and expanding over time - decisions become more flexible and reversible, turning one-way doors into two-way doors.
For more information read Reversible and Irreversible Decisions on the Farnam Street blog.
About Growth Method
Two-way door decisions are exactly the kind of fast, reversible move Growth Method is built for. It’s the agentic marketing platform for B2B teams: our agents help you plan a test, launch it, and analyse what happened, so a two-way door doesn’t sit waiting for a committee, it gets opened, checked, and either kept open or closed again within days. That plan-launch-analyse loop turns Bezos’ framework from a nice idea into a habit your team actually runs, campaign after campaign.
Apply for early access to see how Growth Method helps your team make more two-way door decisions, faster.
Frequently asked questions
What is a two-way door decision?
A two-way door decision is a choice that is easy and cheap to reverse. If it turns out to be wrong, you can simply reopen the door and go back through, so it can and should be made quickly by an individual or small group rather than a committee.
What is the difference between a one-way door and a two-way door decision?
A one-way door decision is hard or impossible to reverse and should be made slowly and carefully with wide consultation. A two-way door decision is easily reversible, so it should be made quickly by a single high-judgment person or small team, since the cost of being wrong is low.
Who coined the one-way door, two-way door decision framework?
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos introduced the analogy in his 2016 letter to shareholders, describing Type 1 (one-way door) and Type 2 (two-way door) decisions as a way to stop large organisations applying slow, heavyweight decision-making to choices that do not need it.
How do you know if a decision is a one-way or two-way door?
Ask how costly and difficult it would be to undo. If reversing the decision is cheap, fast, and low-risk, treat it as a two-way door and decide quickly. If undoing it would be slow, expensive, or impossible, treat it as a one-way door and slow down.