One-Way / Two-Way Door Decisions (Amazon)
Use it when you need to speed up execution by treating reversible choices differently than high-stakes bets.
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What is it?
Amazon's One-Way / Two-Way Door Decisions is a simple mental model Jeff Bezos popularized to calibrate your decision-making tempo.
At its core, you categorize choices as either two-way door, low-cost, reversible moves you can test, learn, and roll back, or one-way door, high-stakes, irreversible commitments that demand rigorous analysis, alignment, and risk mitigation. By labeling each decision upfront, you avoid overbuilding process overhead around fast, safe experiments, and focus heavy-weight approval where it really matters. This framework solves the fundamental tension between speed and caution, giving you clear criteria to push the gas pedal on low-risk bets while applying brakes on high-risk ones. Two-way doors power rapid iteration and user feedback loops, letting your team deploy features, tweak designs, or adjust pricing tests in hours or days. One-way doors cover decisions like infrastructure rewrites, M&A terms, or core architectural shifts that require cross-functional sign-off, budget reserves, and deep-dive due diligence.
Lean into this model to slash bureaucracy, empower your team to move fast, and save intensive review for the bets that deserve it.
Why it matters?
By explicitly separating reversible experiments from irreversible strategic bets, you slash decision latency, unlock rapid iteration loops, and avoid project paralysis. This turbocharges your innovation velocity, more tests in days, fewer boardroom bottlenecks for minor tweaks, while ensuring your biggest commitments get the scrutiny they deserve, ultimately driving faster product-market fit, higher customer satisfaction, and a more resilient growth engine.
How it works
Growth co-pilot turns your toughest product questions into clear, data-backed recommendations you can act on immediately.
1
List all pending decisions
Write down every choice looming on your roadmap or backlog so nothing slips through the cracks.
2
Classify reversibility
For each decision, estimate the cost, time, and complexity to roll it back, low-cost equals two-way door; high-cost equals one-way door.
3
Fast-track two-way doors
Assign minimal process, set clear success metrics and automatic rollback triggers to learn quickly without fear of sunk cost.
4
Rigorous review for one-way doors
Convene stakeholders, run risk analyses, draft contingency plans, and lock in budgets before you commit.
5
Capture and iterate
After the decision plays out, log outcomes and lessons learned to refine your reversibility thresholds and keep your speed/caution calibration razor-sharp.
Frequently asked questions
Growth co-pilot turns your toughest product questions into clear, data-backed recommendations you can act on immediately.
You've mapped out your one-way vs two-way door decisions. Now plug them into the CrackGrowth Diagnostic to catch hidden risks and accelerate execution before you write another line of code.