Amazon Web Services CEO explains the decision-making framework he uses for moving fast

AWS CEO Matt Garman talked in a recent podcast interview about how he makes decisions.

Have you ever wondered how Amazon calculates risky decisions? Founder Jeff Bezos famously simplified the process by sorting decisions into two camps — one-way doors, and two-way doors.

The concept, intended to help a big company categorize decisions and move quickly, appears to be alive and well within Amazon four years after Bezos announced he was stepping down as CEO.

Matt Garman, the CEO of Amazon Web Services, broke down how he applies Bezos’s decision-making model on a recent episode of The Verge’s “Decoder” podcast.

“Well, part of my job is to make the one-way door decisions,” Garman said. “So I think that framework is, it’s a useful one to think about. And just to clarify, in case you’re not aware of it, largely that’s how you go fast. You try to define what those decisions are.”

Bezos has previously said that a common pitfall for companies is employing a “one-size-fits-all” model — sacrificing speed by not knowing what to run up the flagpole, and when. Ideally, two-way-door decisions require minimal executive oversight, if any.

Garman agrees.

“You want the people that are owning those teams at the edges of the organization that really own those products to make important decisions because they know best about their product,” Garman said. “But they’re also decisions that could be undone if we decide that it wasn’t the right thing to do.”

Garman said he’s rarely the expert on any particular subject AWS is working on — and doesn’t try to pretend otherwise, instead devoting time to absorbing their views.

“And so I make sure that I listen and leave space for those experts who spend all of their days thinking about that to weigh in as to how they’ve come up with their recommendation, how they think about what we should do,” Garman said.

The cloud services CEO also asks questions. Garman said he sees his “non-expert” point of view as essential to the decision-making process, as a zoomed-out focus can help him bridge knowledge gaps between one area of the business and another.

“I try to make sure that, as an organization, we’ve connected those dots and then ask the right sets of questions,” Garman said.

Garman said his role leading AWS, ultimately, is to keep things moving by handing down the final word. After all — speed is of the essence.

“And then if there’s a tiebreaker decision I’ll have to do it so that we can move fast,” Garman said. “I think the place we don’t want to be in is to sit there and just debate forever. At some point, you need a tiebreaker decision, and that’s what I view my job as doing as well.”