Raise and Release · Jens Rantil

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2025-01-10 13:00:04

Amazon’s founder Jeff Besos is famous for his “disagree and commit” management principle used in leadership. According to Wikipedia, it means “that individuals are allowed to disagree while a decision is being made, but that once a decision has been made, everybody must commit to implementing the decision”.

I have a slight variation on this which I call “Raise and Release”, which happens before a decision has been made. I use this principle particularly when someone proposes something I strongly disagree with – or know will fail – but for cases where I can’t affect the actual decision. Usually, it is for cases where I am “consulted” or “informed” in the RACI sense.

“Raise and Release” involves a two-step process. The “Raise” step means, I gather up feedback in written text where I explain why I think the proposal is a Bad Idea™️. This can be in a public chat or as a feedback comment in an RFC document. For really complex feedback, I have even found myself writing up a 2-pager or a public blog post1 explaining my reasoning.