Make the Implicit Explicit (Meetings and Decisions)
Force every meeting and decision to declare its purpose, owner, and method out loud
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Time to result
- ~days to results
- Steps
- 4
- Confidence
- 90%
Too many meetings are implicitly about something and never explicit, and too many decisions stall because no one names who decides or how. This framework raises the bar on calling meetings and drives decisions by making the purpose, the decision-maker, the criteria, and the process explicit up front, then pushing through to an actual decision. It also resolves the common paralysis of not knowing whether you have the authority to decide.
Origin
Claire Hughes Johnson's practice from Stripe onboarding sessions, incorporating Gokul Rajaram's SPADE decision framework and Jeff Bezos's Type 1 / Type 2 (reversible vs irreversible) decision model.
Core principles
- 01The work of a meeting is not calling it; the barrier to calling one should be higher
- 02Make the thing that's implicit explicit
- 03If you're unsure who the decision-maker is, it's probably you, and acting that way beats stalling the company
- 04Pick any decision model and follow it, rather than debating which model
- 05Be a force for positive momentum; getting stuck makes work terrible
How to run it
- 1
Interrogate whether the meeting should exist
Before calling a meeting, inquire whether it's actually needed and important; raise the barrier because calling one is too easy.
Pro tip Ask 'does anyone not need to be here?' and offer to send a note instead, to keep it efficient.
Watch out A low barrier to calling meetings floods calendars; the real work is deciding it's warranted.
- 2
Declare the explicit objective
State why you're meeting: is it to make a decision or to share information? Who needs to be here?
Pro tip Make the implicit explicit; most meetings are vaguely about something and never say what.
Watch out An implicit-purpose meeting wastes everyone's time and rarely produces an outcome.
- 3
For decisions, name the decider, criteria, and informed parties
Make explicit that a decision is being made, who is making it, the criteria it'll be made by, and who will be informed. Pick a model (SPADE, RACI, RAPID) and follow it.
Pro tip Add an asterisk defining what to do if the decision needs to be revisited later, so fear of finality doesn't cause paralysis.
Watch out Teams get paralyzed worrying whether they're the decision-maker; that ambiguity kills momentum.
- 4
Classify the stakes with Type 1 / Type 2
Evaluate whether the decision is high-impact and irreversible (Type 1) or low-stakes and reversible (Type 2), then size the process to the stakes and get it done.
Pro tip If you don't know who the decider is and worry it isn't you, just ask; don't get stuck.
Watch out Forgetting to actually make the decision, or getting stuck, is the failure mode that makes work terrible.
In the wild
In Stripe onboarding sessions Claire ran, she told people that if they weren't sure who the decision-maker was, it was probably them, and she'd rather they acted that way than not, because getting stuck slows the whole company down.
→ Empowering people to assume ownership by default kept decisions moving and prevented company-wide paralysis.
Common mistakes
Leaving the meeting or decision purpose implicit
When it's never stated whether a meeting is to decide or inform, or who decides and how, people waste time and decisions stall.
Getting stuck over decision authority
Teams freeze worrying they may not be the decision-maker; the fix is to assume it's you or simply ask, because staying stuck makes the work terrible and kills momentum.
Is it for you?
Best for
Product managers and cross-functional leaders with lots of accountability but little formal authority
Not ideal for
Truly high-stakes irreversible (Type 1) decisions that genuinely warrant slower, more deliberate process
From the transcript
“the work of a meeting is not calling the meeting calling a meeting is easy in fact that is a problem the barrier is very…”
“make the thing that's implicit explicit”
“making it very explicit that there is a decision to be made who is making the decision the criteria by which the decision is going…”
“there's a million different decision models just pick one make it explicit”
“if you're not sure who the decision maker is one it's probably you”
“this framework that Bezos uses type 1 type 2 decisions like is it high impact is it irreversible”
“be a force for positive momentum and it will it will be actually a real career maker”
From the episode
Lessons from scaling Stripe
Claire Hughes Johnson (former COO of Stripe)