Principles for Decision-Making in a Flat Organization

Rough consensus from the IETF offers a practical alternative to top-down or majority-vote decisions. It lets teams move forward once everyone can live with a solution, while still forcing discussion of any fundamental flaws. Doist discovered that unlimited feedback slows execution. The article recounts a designer overwhelmed by a flood of opinions on a logo and a back-end team bogged down by endless comments, illustrating the cost of "not the best choice" feedback. The core rule is to separate "not the best choice" remarks from "fundamental flaws". The former are acceptable and should not block a decision; the latter-issues that increase technical debt, break scalability, or add disproportionate cost-must be resolved before moving on. In practice, leaders ask "Can anyone not live with this?" instead of "Is everyone OK?" This surfaces only blockers. The piece also warns against false compromises where a minority simply concedes without addressing real objections. Applying rough consensus lets remote, async-first teams like Doist keep decisions fast while preserving inclusive culture. It complements Doist's "hell-yeah" hiring standard by accepting good-enough solutions that can be shipped quickly and iterated on.