Disagree & Commit
From Debate to Commitment: Building a Culture of Effective Decision-Making
This week’s big read dives into one of the best concepts for breaking free from analysis paralysis and making headway when progress seems frustratingly slow: "Disagree and Commit."
This mantra, popularized by Intel’s development team in the early 2000s, has been a game-changer for organizations willing to embrace it. At its core, "disagree and commit" is about aligning on one of the most fundamental truths in software development: progress in any direction is better than no progress at all
[Intel] believe that even when people can’t come to an agreement around an issue, they must still leave the room unambiguously committed to a common course of action.
Patrick Lencioni
Decisions Are Rarely Right or Wrong
As developers, we instinctively know that decisions are not inherently "right" or "wrong." More often than not, decisions exist on a spectrum of optimality with rightness and wrongness being the perspective on that optimality, as it appears with the priorities and biases of the person evaluating them. These perspectives are inevitably shaped by the goals, vested interests and responsibilities of the opinion holder, but it is usually a narrow viewpoint. The role of the decision maker is to try to rise above all the competing subjective opinions and weigh the different perspectives and their interests against each other. Their role is to balance these inputs and choose the path that best serves the project as a whole, even if it doesn’t perfectly fit with any single perspective.
The amount of time we spend debating a decision should scale with its impact: significant decisions deserve longer consideration, while smaller ones need quicker resolution. The concept of “disagree and commit” isn’t a value statement on how long decisions should be deliberated for, or how much discussion or debate there is. It is an ethos that defines when the discussion ends and, crucially, what happens afterwards.
A Story of Circling in Place
One of the most vivid examples of failing to adopt this principle comes from my time working on the now-infamous Hyenas project at Creative Assembly. I remember sitting in endless meetings where we’d make a decision one week, only to revisit the same topic in the following week’s meeting. Stakeholders would backtrack, rehash old points, or claim we hadn’t agreed on anything.
I couldn’t tell if it was fear of making a suboptimal decision, fear of accountability, or simply that people weren’t willing to have a decision made that they didn’t agree with — but the result was paralysis.
Because these director-level meetings only happened weekly, every revisited discussion caused another week of delays. Progress stalled. Developers, eager for clear direction, grew increasingly frustrated. The fate of the project became a harsh lesson in what happens when you drop momentum; after 5 years of development it was cancelled months before release.
Ultimately, the team never figured out how to "disagree and commit," and that was one of many factors that led to the project’s failure.
The Purpose of "Disagree and Commit"
At its heart, "disagree and commit" is a philosophy designed to minimize decision fatigue and maintain momentum. It provides a hard stop to endless debates, freeing up time and mental energy to focus on execution.
Here’s the mindset we adopt when we embrace the idea of Disagree and Commit:
We acknowledge that decisions won’t always be optimal.
Perfect decisions are rare, and striving for them often wastes time. Progress matters more than perfection.
We acknowledge that not making a decision is itself a decision.
Prolonged indecision consumes time, attention, and budget that could be better spent moving forward.
We acknowledge that consensus is not always achievable.
Alignment doesn’t require unanimous agreement—it requires commitment to the decision once it’s made.
We acknowledge that perfect information is unattainable.
Waiting for every detail to be clear is unrealistic. Decisions are made with the best information available at the time.
We acknowledge the value of psychological safety.
A culture where team members feel safe to voice disagreement is essential for fostering healthy debate and innovation.
We acknowledge that execution is a shared responsibility.
The commit part of “disagree and commit” is for everyone. Delaying or withholding effort due to disagreement with a decision disrupts progress, creates bottlenecks and undermines momentum.
Disagree
If everyone in the room always agrees, something is wrong. This often signals deeper cultural issues. It could mean that the leader demands agreement, perhaps out of ego or insecurity, discouraging dissent and stifling honest feedback. Alternatively, it may indicate that disagreement is socially disincentivized, with a lack of psychological safety making team members hesitant to challenge ideas. In either case, the result is a team that avoids conflict at the expense of innovation and better decision-making. By comparison, orgs that embrace disagreement as a natural and valuable part of decision-making tend to make better, more informed choices in the long run. The principle of disagree is summarised as such:
Dissent is healthy
Dissent and engagement will, in the long run, lead to better courses of action. That’s not to say the result of the process will always lead to the most optimal route, as we’ve discussed, but on average I believe decisions will be better.
Disagreement isn’t and shouldn’t be personal.
When an idea is riddled with ego it’s bound to go wrong. The aim is to reach as close to the best decision as possible with the business goals in mind. If everyone remains focused on that outcome then it’s possible to disagree amiably.
Deliberation time is finite
At some point things need to move from the discussion and disagreement phase to the decide phase. There will usually be more that can be said in any discussion but at some point things need to be decided.
Decisions are made. Outcomes are iterated upon.
Going back and rehashing the same discussions and disagreements again isn’t healthy and will hamstring momentum. Revisiting is a costly move that should be made only when important new information comes to light or the implementation has already failed.
Building a Culture of "Disagree"
For this philosophy to thrive, your organization needs to cultivate the following pillars:
Encourage disagreement as a pathway to better decisions.
Dissent signals engagement and thoughtful consideration. Balance removing the personal attachment to ideas while also rewarding them.
Foster a safe environment for disagreement.
People need to feel heard, valued, and unafraid of blame or retaliation.
Promote blameless retrospectives.
Reflection without assigning blame reinforces a culture of learning and continuous improvement.
Commit
Disagreement, and developing the culture around it, is only half of the battle. The “Commit” half is just as important and has as much depth and nuance in the theories behind it. The commit can be the product of committee process but just as likely it is a single decision maker or a single driving voice inside a group that pushes for consensus. Commitment ensures that once a decision is made, the entire team takes ownership and works toward execution, regardless of individual preferences. Here's the key principles behind a culture of commitment:
Commitment Requires Ownership
Once a decision is made, it is owned by the team or individual driving it, and responsibility for its success is shared by all.
Decisions Should Be Clearly Communicated
Decisions lose power without clear communication. Document them, in short form during the meeting and long form afterwards, then ensure they are shared with both internal and external stakeholders.
Critique Processes, Not People
Criticize how decisions are made, not those making them. Create a learning culture where processes can evolve without assigning blame to individuals.
Decision-Making Is a Burden
Recognize that making decisions, especially tough ones, is not a privilege but a responsibility. Show empathy for decision-makers, understanding that not all factors are visible to everyone involved.
Momentum Matters
Owning decisions and their consequences is what drives progress. Without it, teams stall, and projects lose momentum.
Building a Culture of “Commit”
Document Decisions Immediately
Capture decisions in writing, no matter how informal at first, and share them promptly with stakeholders to avoid ambiguity or misalignment.
Create a Clear Feedback Loop
Establish a process where team members can critique how decisions were made without undermining the commitment to execute them.
Train for Decision-Making
Equip leaders and teams with frameworks to make informed decisions confidently, such as prioritization techniques or risk assessment models.
Celebrate Execution
Recognize and reward teams or individuals who execute decisions effectively, reinforcing the value of ownership.
Mob Mentality
I want to write one last brief point on mob mentality as this is something I’ve seen a lot in almost all companies I’ve worked for. It is the tendency to judge decisions from the sidelines, often with the benefit of hindsight but without the localised context that a decision was made with. It’s incredibly easy to look back on choices made by leadership or peers and point out flaws, but this oversimplified judgment ignores the complexities of decision-making and undermines trust.
Decisions are rarely made under perfect conditions. Leaders must weigh incomplete information, conflicting priorities, and tight deadlines, all without knowing the eventual outcomes. Criticizing those decisions after the fact adds little value and creates a culture where blame replaces learning. Over time, this mindset stifles innovation and progress as teams hesitate to act, worried that any misstep will be met with public critique.
As managers, it’s our responsibility to provide as much context for decisions as possible, even when we have to infer what that context might have been. We need to encourage constructive debate while addressing and shutting down cynicism when it arises. It’s also our role to teach our teams about the realities of decision-making, the hidden factors that influence those choices, and why it’s easy to judge decisions when you’re not the one making them.
Final Thoughts
"Disagree and commit" isn’t about rushing decisions—it’s about recognizing when to stop debating and start executing. It’s about acknowledging that action beats stagnation, even if the first step isn’t perfect.
So next time you’re stuck in an endless debate, remember this: progress in any direction is better than no progress at all.
This has been a beast to write so thank you for taking the time to read, and please let me know your thoughts. If you liked the content then I post every day on LinkedIn and you can follow me there.
Thomas A. Miller