The best way to design for indecisive leaders is to serve them gelato
How to guide indecisive leaders to choose without taking over their job
"Well, I had enough and started acting like a Product Manager to solve that problem, " one designer told me, frustrated with his leadership.
You'll likely design for an indecisive leader when you work in design long enough. They might be a Subject Matter Expert who was 'promoted' to management.
Or they might be nice but not equipped for organizational politics and in-fighting.
Or, they're constantly receiving conflicting executive orders, causing them (and you) to leap from idea to idea.
It can be frustrating to design in these situations, as you're either waiting for decisions or constantly getting your design rejected due to some invisible criteria.
But it doesn't have to be that way, and you don't need to become a pushy extrovert to affect changes.
You have to become a great facilitator, like gelato salespeople are.
Facilitation, gelato, and the power of low-fidelity
Gelato (and ice cream) shops often encounter a widespread problem: 'too many flavors' to choose from.
Offering 31 gelato flavors sounds nice, but it can easily result in customers being paralyzed by choice, with a line forming behind them.
This choice paralysis is often referred to as the "Jam problem" (the initial experiment involved about 24 flavors of jam), and it's the same process indecisive leaders struggle with.
All of the options they see sound good, and they might not have previous experience (or intuition) to help them decide. As a result, gelato salespeople often take a couple of different approaches to help.
They'll write descriptions that (hopefully) guide customer choices. They'll give recommendations if customers ask, "What's your favorite flavor?"
Sometimes, they'll tell stories about each scoop and flavor of gelato. Or, they give free samples so people can try a few different options.
They're not ordering for the customer: the customer still chooses what they want and pays for it. But they do all they can to facilitate a decision by reducing the barrier of entry and making it as frictionless as possible.
You can also do that to help guide indecisive leaders, starting with framing the problems.
Problem framing, or "What gelato am I looking for?"
I've talked a lot about problem framing because it's an integral way designers can challenge business decisions (without getting fired).
The idea is simple: if you want to influence without authority, you use questions, not statements.
If you tell a decision-maker, "I think this is a crappy idea," then that can often come with potential risks, like:
Antagonizing people on your team
Make conversations about "your opinion" vs. a HiPPO (Highest-paid Person's Opinion)
Make it seem like you're challenging authority
However, what happens if you ask, "Why would users want to buy that feature?"
The dialog moves internally: Another person (you) hasn't told the decision-maker that the idea is crap. The decision-maker might realize, on his own, that the idea is crap.
You avoid the backfire effect: When people get challenged on opinions, they don't change their minds: they dig their heels in deeper
You are facilitating an open-ended conversation. There are not only two solutions—there might be more—but the first step in any conversation is showing that the current solution doesn't work.
This is the same idea as a gelato shop asking, "Are you in the mood for something chocolatey or fruity?" Depending on the answer, you can narrow down 31 gelato flavors to just 6.
But the question remains: how do you tackle specific issues? Recommend, based on your options.
Options analysis or facilitating decisions
Options analysis is often underutilized, but it can be incredibly helpful with indecisive leaders.
It's often best to provide only a single design solution to keep things simple, but sometimes, indecisive leaders want more options.
This is known as the "choice overload bias," where people prefer too many options rather than too few. It's the reason sayings like "I'm keeping my options open" or "I don't want to regret my choice" are common.
If people ask you to generate three design solutions (or they hate just having 1), you can lean into options analysis (which often works best in low-fidelity).
You start by providing enough context about the current problem and a couple of potential design options we can use.
These choices should include Pros and Cons, which discuss specific aspects that might help leaders decide. But it should be obvious which choice you think is the best.
Whether you choose a gold star and the words "recommended" or something else, the idea is to give decision-makers a default choice, which they can choose if they can’t tell the difference.
However, you reframed it so that you didn't tell the decisionmaker, "We're doing X.” You've given them choices but made choosing the best option as easy as possible.
This is how you can work with indecisive decision-makers.
To deal with indecisive leaders, become a great facilitator
If you work in design long enough, you will inevitably encounter an indecisive leader.
After all, making decisions and attaching your name has risks. If you didn't make a choice that cost the company millions, their head won't be on the chopping block.
As a result, you’ll inevitably encounter someone who thinks the best way to keep their job is not to make a single decision alone.
Working on a team with an indecisive leader can cause endless frustration. But you don’t need to (necessarily) take charge of all decisions: all you need to do is make the choice as easy as possible.
Doing so avoids the frustration of endless revisions, as well as avoids antagonizing people by making choices for them.
So, if you're working as a designer where leaders can't make up their minds, take a moment and try to make it easy to make decisions (like a gelato seller).
You can help them make decisions without taking over their role.
Kai Wong is a Senior Product Designer and Data and Design newsletter writer. He teaches a course, The Strategic Designer, about showing your value as a designer and get buy-in for your design recommendations.