I’ve learned that the greatest decisions are made once you leave the boardroom and really listen. Every quarter we solicit input from students, parents, teachers on various continents, and our curriculum team. Rather than formal surveys, we ask them to provide feedback in whatever way feels natural to them — a brief video, a voice note, even a quick sketch. Our leadership team then has shared time looking at the feedback together, noticing not only what is said, but the way it is said.

What we are learning is that oftentimes our richest ideas come from places we least expect. For example, we had a student in Nigeria propose weekend micro-lab challenges around everyday life. We piloted it out, and saw STEM engagement grow over 10% in places with a lack of traditional resources. The teachers liked it so much they started to weave it into their weekly lessons.

Ultimately, this allows us to be a little less top-down and a lot more human. It has allowed us to catch blind spots early, provide opportunities for new course innovations, and build trust throughout our community. It’s been very easy for schools to become so large that they become mechanized and lacking humanity; this approach invites us back in.

An effective method I have witnessed is to embed structured dissent into the decision-making process — it purposely develops space for disagreement, especially from those who wouldn’t usually say anything at all. This does not merely mean inviting feedback; instead, the idea is to design meetings and workflow that assume disagreement and discussion will occur.

For example, in one organization, we employed a “red team” approach for all major strategic decisions. A rotating group of employees from various departments and backgrounds engaged in dispute at various points in the process. The red team was responsible for challenging the assumed plan, formulating hard questions, surfacing blind spots, and proposing alternative plans to consider. This was not adversarial; it was a ritualized way of stress-testing ideas to concept or a concrete decision without restricting feedback.

It had an immediate impact. The red team revealed assumptions that would have ended up wasting a fair amount of time and money and increased cross-functional measured trust. It made people feel heard, provided a fair amount of psychological safety for all involved, initiated even more creative problem solving, and ultimately better execution. Often, it also developed hidden talent — employees that were not leaders but provided piercing insights that impacted the future direction of the company.

My team is dispersed and largely remote, and for quite a while, that meant I handled decision-making alone. It felt efficient at first — quicker calls, less back-and-forth — but over time I realized it was also limiting. I wasn’t tapping into the collective expertise of my team, and in recruiting especially, where every client and candidate scenario is different, that lack of diversity in perspective was a real drawback.

So, I made a conscious shift toward a more collaborative decision-making process. We began using structured check-ins, shared digital whiteboards, and regular strategy calls where everyone could weigh in. A big part of this was reaching out to people less inclined to speak up, like those in lower or temporary positions. I wanted to be sure we were truly challenging assumptions and finding new angles, and that meant finding a wide breadth of input.

Not only did our decisions become stronger because of this shift, they increased in nuance. A client strategy that I might have seen in one light often gets reshaped when someone else points out a candidate’s market behavior, or another teammate highlights a regional trend I hadn’t factored in. That blend of perspectives has led to solutions that are both more creative and more effective for our clients.

And it’s also been incredible for morale. Involving the team sends a clear message: I really do care about what you think. It signals that no matter where you are in the organization, you play a vital role and have a hand in the success of the business. That’s motivating for people, especially in a market where long-term results can feel very distant from your day-to-day office work.

One approach I’ve found effective in ensuring diverse perspectives in decision-making is what I call “rotating ownership.” For every major initiative, I intentionally rotate meeting leads and decision-review roles among team members from different departments, levels, and backgrounds. This structure ensures that input doesn’t just come from the most vocal or senior voices, but from those closest to the work — often people who spot nuances others might miss.

This practice has consistently improved both accuracy and morale. For example, by including data annotators in early-stage planning discussions, we’ve caught potential workflow inefficiencies before launch — saving significant rework time. More importantly, team members feel genuine ownership of decisions, not just compliance with them. That sense of inclusion has made our outcomes more reliable and our culture far more collaborative.

One approach that has proven very effective for us is creating structured spaces where every voice can be heard, regardless of title, department, or location. This includes open forums, cross-functional workshops, and our bi-weekly town halls where employees can ask anonymous questions on any topic. What I’ve observed is that when people see their perspectives genuinely considered, it changes the dynamic of decision-making. We end up with richer discussions, more creative solutions, and decisions that are far more sustainable because they’re informed by the realities of diverse experiences across the company.

One approach that reliably brings diverse perspectives into the room is our two-lens memo. Before any consequential decision (policy, launch, vendor, pricing), the owner writes a one-page memo with the goal, options, and recommended path. Then two people outside the owner’s lane must add short sections — one “customer/ops lens” and one “risk/dissent lens.” We start the meeting with three minutes of silent reading, the owner responds point-by-point, and we publish the memo with the dissent intact so the reasoning and the trade-offs are visible.

The thing that has changed is that now we catch edge cases earlier and ship with fewer reversals. When we rebuilt our book launch funnel, a support lead used the customer lens to flag refund language and time-zone confusion; we tweaked copy and cut a wave of tickets before they happened.

On our AI disclosure policy, an editor’s dissent pushed us to anchor on evidence and human accountability (“assisted by AI; reviewed by ___”) rather than slapping a big badge on top — engagement held, trust improved, and legal was happy because the audit trail was clear.

But there’s one side effect that I didn’t anticipate: quieter voices contribute more when their input is written, bounded and required by the process. Outcomes got better, but so did the temperature in the room.

We try to keep it simple but collaborative. Since we’re a small team, we can’t afford to slow things down with endless meetings, but we also don’t want to miss out on good ideas. So before making a decision, we put together a short brief that outlines the problem, who it affects, and what success looks like. Then everyone gets a chance to give their input — one by one — before we open it up for discussion. That way, everyone still gets heard.

We actually used this process when working with a marketing agency that was coaching our content manager. They came in with a lot of great playbooks, and we brought our knowledge of our audience and what’s been working. Combining those perspectives through that process helped us move faster and align better. It led to clearer decisions, less back-and-forth, and honestly, stronger results all around.