In two words: Defaults matter. And they matter for a few reasons:
- They define what will happen when there’s a disagreement
- They define what will happen if no action is taken
- They make making a decision much easier because there’s already a path that will happen even if no decision is made. In other words, if a default is already in place, then the decision turns from “X, Y, or Do-Nothing” to “X will already happen by default; is Y better enough to be worth the energy to change from the default path?”
Just think about the default settings on your computer. You save that Word file as a “.docx” by default but it requires a conscious decision to change it. Imagine you had to rethink the file type to use every single time you pressed command-S! (Will this analogy reveal my age soon, as we approach this web-only save-everything-automatically-every-second world?)
This has a few interesting implications. One is that no one else in your organization is probably thinking about defaults in terms of your particular work, or the meta-work. This gives you a wide path to create value—which your client or boss will love—but also to define the defaults in a way to achieve the business goals that you believe are in the best interest of the company. A big win-win in all directions.
Note this can happen formally—create processes and docs with your defaults—or informally. Just mention in every email, “If I don’t hear back from X, I will do Y by default.” This is a bit more cumbersome but achieves the same result.
The specific default policies to define depend on the job and the circumstances and your personality. However, here is one I personally love, often recommend, and may be useful for you: to have a “default open” policy of transparency.
What I mean by this is the following, most companies prioritize silos and secrets, not in a malicious or bad way, it’s just the more natural and traditional way businesses are run. To reframe that in the positive way they think: information is shared generally on a need-to-know basis.
But now imagine the reverse default, imagine everything is shared in an open and accessible way—that is, everyone can see it unless there is a specific reason not to. So, imagine:
- Instead of requests happening in a private email or conversation, happening in a Slack channel where everyone on the corresponding team can see
- Instead of documents being created privately and shared privately, being placed in shared folders by default, where anyone can poke around as needed.
This sort of strategy helps achieve a lot of the other context and transparency strategies.
It may or may not work for your context, but it is worth trying. And remember the downside: information overload. The way I try to achieve “default open” without information overload is to share everything openly, but only “tag” people when it’s particularly relevant to them. So, the rest is there to skim or review if they want to or need to, but they know to look in particular at what is tagged.
