Who decides?

Around the one person who decides, others can play three roles, and mixing them up causes most decision fights.

• Advise: your input is asked for and heard, but the decider may weigh it and go another way.
• Agree: nothing happens without your yes. Use it sparingly, because every agreeing party can stall the decision.
• Veto: you can stop a decision, usually on narrow grounds such as the law, safety or the budget limit, but you don't choose among the options.

Take the question of whether to offer Sofiia, a seasonal coordinator from the spring, a September contract: Iryna decides on hiring, Hanna must agree because the money is hers, and you advise: Iryna wants your recommendation by Monday, with reasons. A good piece of advice names the options, says which one you'd pick and why, and what would change your mind. Then it's Iryna's call, and she tells you what she decided and why.

Being the lead doesn't mean every decision on your desk is yours. Decision rights answer four questions for each decision: who decides, whose advice is sought, who must agree and who can veto. Settle them before the discussion starts, not after.

A quick test: whose work or budget does the decision change, and who will carry it out? Decisions about how your own team works (a shift pattern, a meeting rhythm) are usually yours, after hearing the people affected. Decisions about hiring and money sit with your manager, and finance often has to agree. Some decisions you already handed down: refund exceptions inside the policy belong to Olha since February, and a self-contained piece of work like a reply template is a good thing to delegate whole.

When rights are unclear, two things happen: people wait for a yes nobody owns, or two people decide the same thing differently.

For any decision that is yours, say up front how you'll make it. There are four common decision modes:

1. I decide: fast, for urgent or safety issues, or when nobody else has the information.
2. I decide after consulting you: you collect input from the people affected, then decide and explain.
3. We decide together: the group decides, by consensus or by vote, and you accept the result.
4. I delegate it to you: someone else decides inside limits you set, and you don't overrule them afterwards.

Pick the mode by urgency, by who holds the knowledge and by how much the team needs to own the result. A customer's personal data posted in the chat by mistake: you decide now. The summer shifts touch everyone's evenings: consult, then decide. How the team marks the end of the season: together. The template wording: delegated to a coordinator.

Naming the mode only helps if the announcement is true. Fake consultation means asking for input on something already settled. People notice quickly, and next time they stop giving input at all, even when it would matter.

Three common forms: asking "what do you all think?" when the pattern is already in your manager's inbox; calling a vote you plan to override if it goes the wrong way; and hiding behind your manager ("Iryna wants this") for a call that is really yours.

An honest announcement says the mode, whose input you want and by when, when you'll decide, and what could change your mind. You may share the option you prefer, as long as you say it's a draft. If you've already decided, say so and explain why: people accept a clear decision more easily than a show of listening.

Every hard-to-undo decision has a last responsible moment: the point after which the choice is made for you. Waiting past it isn't neutral. It picks the default option, without anyone weighing the options or owning the result.

Sofiia must answer the other employer by 16 July. If Klasna says nothing by then, she takes that job, which means the team starts the September restart without her. That's a "no", made by the calendar.

So for a decision that's hard to undo, find the deadline first and work backwards: when the recommendation is due (Iryna asked for Monday), when the budget must be agreed, when the answer goes out. If you need more time than the deadline allows, say so early and ask whether it can move. Delay is only safe for decisions that stay open.

How much time and input a decision deserves depends mostly on how hard it is to undo. A reversible decision can be changed cheaply: a two-week trial of a 12:00–21:00 shift, a template wording, the order of a call agenda. If it fails, you switch back next week.

Make reversible decisions fast and close to the work. Running a three-week consultation for a two-week trial costs more than a wrong first try would.

A hard-to-undo decision is different. If nobody answers Sofiia by 16 July, she takes the other offer, and in September you can't call her back. Such decisions deserve more options, more input and more time, but inside the deadline. Ask two questions before you start: what does it cost to undo this, and when is the last moment we can still decide?

A decision log is one shared page where each decision gets a short entry: what was decided, who decided and in which mode, the options considered and why this one, and when to revisit it.

It solves two everyday problems. The same question stops coming back every Monday, because the reason is written down. And people who were away can catch up without asking around: after her last vacation Olha spent a morning finding out why the templates had changed. In a summer when everyone takes leave at some point, that matters even more.

Keep it light so people actually read it: about five lines per entry, linked from the team channel. Leave out who argued against what, because a log that names opponents becomes a scoreboard and makes people quiet. Leave out transcripts too; nobody reads them.

In the "I decide after consulting you" mode, the lead hears everyone, weighs what they say and still makes the call. The decision isn't bound to the majority. If most of the team would rather have no late shift at all, you may still try one, as long as you explain what you took from their input and what you didn't, and why.

If you intend to follow the majority, that's a different mode: "we decide together". Announce it as such and accept the result. Switching modes halfway, consulting and then treating the input as a vote, or calling a vote and then overruling it, is what makes people distrust the whole process. The same applies upwards: on Sofiia you advise and Iryna decides, and she owes you an explanation, not obedience to your advice.

How it fits together: decision rights say whose call it is; the mode says how it's made; reversibility sets the pace; the log keeps it. The next lesson asks how to make the call well: real options, trade-offs and a pre-mortem.