Jeff Bezos’s 1-Way vs 2-Way Doors

How important is any given decision? Jeff Bezos focuses on how easy it is to walk back

What are 1-Way vs 2-Way Doors?

Making decisions can be anxiety-provoking as we worry about what will go wrong. And, sometimes, we enter “analysis paralysis” as we strive to reduce our uncertainty.

In Amazon’s 2016 letter to shareholders, Jeff Bezos encourages us to allocate decisions into one of two buckets:

Reversible ‘2-Way Door’ Decisions: we make a call, and it’s relatively easy to change it if we discover it’s not working out as we’d hoped.
Irreversible ‘1-Way Door ‘ Decisions: once we’re in, we’re not coming back out. From Jeff B: “These decisions must be made methodically, carefully, slowly, with great deliberation and consultation. If you walk through and don't like what you see on the other side, you can't get back to where you were before.”

In our professional lives, 1-way door decisions could be quitting a job, acquiring a company, or making a major tech platform change.

In our personal lives, they could be getting married, going closely-cropped if we currently sport long hair, or moving to a new country (like our Mayflower friends).

All of these are technically reversible but would take years and potentially large amounts of pain.

Connecting this to a favourite children’s book, Alice may return from Wonderland after she tumbles down the rabbit hole, but she’s going to reemerge forever changed.

When to use 1-Way vs 2-Way Doors?

We can ask ourselves, “Is this going through a 1-Way Door or 2-Way Door?” whenever making any decision.

Asking ourselves this question becomes more important as we progress further in our careers and as the organizations we work at become larger. There’s no universal law that says more mature leaders and companies become more risk-averse, but more often than not we’ve found it’s accurate.

This leads to an increasing default tendency to overestimate the number of 1-Way Door decisions. Here’s Jeff B on this topic:

“As organizations get larger, there seems to be a tendency to use the heavyweight Type 1 decision-making process on most decisions, including many Type 2 decisions. The end result of this is slowness, unthoughtful risk aversion, failure to experiment sufficiently, and consequently diminished invention.”

Although it may seem surprising at first glance, Bezos has shared that neither Amazon Prime nor AWS were 1-Way Door decisions. In both cases, Amazon launched a new product without a lot of fanfare and could have wound it down without a lot of fanfare. Today, shutting either down would no longer be easy, but these were 2-Way Door Decisions at launch.

How do we use 1-Way and 2-Way Doors?

John:

What I find nuanced about AWS and Amazon Prime being considered 2-Way Door Decisions is that it may have felt differently to Jeff Bezos (Amazon’s CEO at the time) versus the executives launching and running each new bet. Bezos and Amazon had a long history of successful bets and a growing portfolio of offerings to customers, so failure here was a 2-Day Door; but was it a 2-Way Door for the executive in charge? What if he/she had been hired externally to come in and lead the new charge on this new big bet? His/her identity at the company is going to be the “Prime Person,” which makes it trickier to suddenly unwind it because it could be a 2-Way Door for the company, a 1-Way Door (OUT!) for the executive.

James:

100%. It’s why these larger adjacent bets tend to work better with a leader who already has a track record and trust built up. This was the case with AWS: Amazon’s current CEO, Andy Jassy, took over AWS in 2003, a full 6 years after joining Amazon. These 6-years of experience built-up increase the likelihood that it also felt like a 2-Way Door for Jassy’s career at both Amazon and outside. I love this quote from Jeff B that broadens out to discuss his philosophy around risk:

“…failure and invention are inseparable twins. To invent you have to experiment, and if you know in advance that it's going to work, it's not an experiment. Most large organizations embrace the idea of invention, but are not willing to suffer the string of failed experiments necessary to get there.”

Moving beyond Amazon, when have you used 1-Way and 2-Way Doors?

John:

I’ve used it a lot to make sure that my team or I isn’t overthinking something. I’m not saying 2-Way Door decisions require no thinking, but they require less thinking than 1-Way Doors. I’ve been guilty of seeking the same level of rigor for both types, which leads to the following scenario:

“We don’t go deep enough on the 1-Way Doors because we go too deep on the 2-Way Doors.”

We’re peanut-buttering our thinking - Brad Garlinghouse’s famous Yahoo! memo-style - vs weighting more focus to 1-Way Door Decisions. As LinkedIn COO Dan Shapero talked about in our Blueprint on The Priority Matrix (PMAT) investing in making one or two big decisions go REALLY RIGHT usually beats a more sprinkled approach of smaller bets. The concept also reminds me of an idea we’ve discussed around, “What answer do we want?” The idea of making sure we’re going to the right level of depth on answering a question: sometimes, the 2-minute off-the-cuff answer is best; other times, the 2-quarter go super deep answer is best. On this spectrum, 2-Way Door decision answers usually are measured in days; 1-Way Door decisions answers could easily be measured in months or even quarters.

JAMES:

I love “What answer do we want?” We used it all the time with Bain clients and I know that our longtime colleague and superstar operator, Mike Derezin, is a huge fan of it too. Let’s Blueprint it. As a closing thought, 1-Way and 2-Way Doors also connects to legendary Intel Co-Founder and longtime CEO Andy Grove’s idea of Revolving Doors. In the mid-1980s, when Intel decided to move from focusing on memory - where they were losing to Japanese competitors - to chips, Grove outlined in his book, “Only the Paranoid Survive,” a conversation with fellow Intel co-founder Gordon Moore (yes, that Moore):

“I looked out the window at the Ferris wheel of the Great America amusement park revolving in the distance, then I turned back to Gordon and I asked, “If we got kicked out and the board brought in a new CEO, what do you think he would do?” Gordon answered without hesitation, “He would get us out of memories.” I stared at him, then said, “Why shouldn’t you and I walk out the door, come back and do it ourselves?”

I (James) am not a huge fan of “Only the Paranoid Survive,” but I know a lot of folks love it. On the lovin’ it front, I do love Grove’s “High Output Management,” which is one of the top 2 or 3 business books I’ve recommended the most (here’s my “What’s the So What?” write-up).

Want to learn more?

WANT TO GO DEEPER ON 1-WAY VS 2-WAY DOORS?

Here’s 60 seconds with LinkedIn COO Dan Shapero, our Operator Extraordinaire on The Priority Matrix (PMAT):

And here’s 60 seconds with Incredible Health CRO Holly Procter, whom we can neither can confirm nor deny will be in a Blueprint going live in the next week or so!

Here’s a good piece by a former Amazon exec, including the memorable phrase, “At Amazon, we spent significant effort trying to turn every door into a two-way door.”

Two-way Doors Are Great and One-way Doors Are Scary — Thoughtful Decision-Making

How to recognize and respond to two-way and one-way doors. A thoughtful approach to decision-making.

www.scarletink.com

Two-way Doors Are Great and One-way Doors Are Scary — Thoughtful Decision-Making

And here’s a good take on the concept from an R&D leader’s perspective

One-way & Two-way Door Decisions

One-way and two-way door decisions provide a practical framework for decision-making in software engineering management. The idea…

medium.com

WANT TO GO DEEPER ON JAMES CLEAR’S SIMILAR FRAMEWORK?

James Clear (author of Atomic Habits; James R’s “What’s the So What?” write-up here) recommends a similar framework, adding some memorable imagery:

"I think about decisions in three ways: hats, haircuts, and tattoos.
Most decisions are like hats. Try one and if you don’t like it, put it back and try another. The cost of a mistake is low, so move quickly and try a bunch of hats.
Some decisions are like haircuts. You can fix a bad one, but it won’t be quick and you might feel foolish for awhile. That said, don't be scared of a bad haircut. Trying something new is usually a risk worth taking. If it doesn't work out, by this time next year you will have moved on and so will everyone else.
A few decisions are like tattoos. Once you make them, you have to live with them. Some mistakes are irreversible. Maybe you'll move on for a moment, but then you'll glance in the mirror and be reminded of that choice all over again. Even years later, the decision leaves a mark. When you're dealing with an irreversible choice, move slowly and think carefully."

WANT TO GO DEEPER ON JEFF BEZOS & AMAZON?

Anytime that Acquired covers a topic - it’s the best business-focused podcast ever created, and in some ways an inspiration for Blueprints - we’ll always recommend it first because the quality is so consistently off-the-charts, including here:

Amazon.com

Listen to this episode from Acquired on Spotify. Amazon. No company has impacted the internet — and all of modern life — more than this one. We’ve waited seven years to do this episode, and are so, so excited to finally dive into every nook and cranny of this legendary company. And of course because we’re Acquired and this is Amazon, we couldn’t contain it all to just one episode… even a 4+ hour one! So today we focus on Amazon.com the retail business, and we’ll have another full episode on AWS coming soon. And because all great series are trilogies, to fully understand Amazon we highly recommend starting first with our previous episode on Walmart, which truly is the giant’s shoulder that Jeff Bezos stood upon. Let’s go!! **Big News** We've got merch! Check it out at https://www.acquired.fm/store ! If you want more Acquired, you can follow our newly public LP Show feed here in the podcast player of your choice (including Spotify!). Sponsors:Pilot: https://bit.ly/acquiredpilot24Statsig: https://bit.ly/acquiredstatsig24Crusoe: https://bit.ly/acquiredcrusoeLinks:Jeff’s first public Amazon interview Our early-Acquired-days interview with Tom Alberg Episode sourcesCarve Outs:Rick Rubin on the Lex Fridman PodcastUrsula Le GuinDissect Season 2 on My Beautiful Dark Twisted FantasyElden Ring (again) ‍Note: Acquired hosts and guests may hold assets discussed in this episode. This podcast is not investment advice, and is intended for informational and entertainment purposes only. You should do your own research and make your own independent decisions when considering any financial transactions.

open.spotify.com

Amazon Web Services

Listen to this episode from Acquired on Spotify. So, how DID an online book retailer end up building the infrastructure layer that powers the entire internet? (Or at least 39% of it, per latest market share data.) While many myths, legends, and some downright falsehoods exist, the real answer to that question deserves a full Acquired episode of its very own. So here it is: the story of Amazon Web Services. Who’s got the truth? Tune in and find out. :) If you want more Acquired, you can follow our newly public LP Show feed here in the podcast player of your choice (including Spotify!). Sponsors:Pilot: https://bit.ly/acquiredpilot24Statsig: https://bit.ly/acquiredstatsig24Crusoe: https://bit.ly/acquiredcrusoeLinks:Steve Yegge’s Platforms Rant (so good!) Ben Thompson on AWS and Snowflake Episode sourcesCarve Outs:Moon KnightJohn Carmack on The Lex Fridman Podcast‍Note: Acquired hosts and guests may hold assets discussed in this episode. This podcast is not investment advice, and is intended for informational and entertainment purposes only. You should do your own research and make your own independent decisions when considering any financial transactions.

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We recommend both of these books from author Brad Stone: the first tackles Amazon through about 2010; the second through about 2020:

The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon

Amazon.com: The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon eBook : Stone, Brad: Kindle Store

a.co

The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon

Amazon Unbound: Jeff Bezos and the Invention of a Global Empire

Amazon Unbound: Jeff Bezos and the Invention of a Global Empire - Kindle edition by Stone, Brad. Download it once and read it on your Kindle device, PC, phones or tablets. Use features like bookmarks, note taking and highlighting while reading Amazon Unbound: Jeff Bezos and the Invention of a Global Empire.

a.co