At Legacy, 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 lens 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 it was mechanized and lacking humanity, this approach invites us back in.
As a leader or boss, my process and approach has always been to speak last. This allows me to ensure that other's in the room have airtime. This includes people from different parts of the business as well as across the organizational stack. To me it does not matter who you are, if you are in the room, you have earned the right to be there and to share what you think about a problem. I particularly try to encourage the junior team members to go first as often they can be deferential to the senior team and therefore either don't say anything or simple agree with the senior opinion offered. I find less tenured employees often have a lot of fresh, exciting, bold, and creative solutions that are not affected by group think or company legacy methods. The second group I want to hear from is the group of people who are not directly involved in the project or problem being discussed. This allows fresh and unbiased perspectives to be heard and ideas that the project team may not have entertained. The first benefit of the above approach is cultural where the junior team gets to participate, genuinely feel like they have been able to contribute, and collectively helps them build their confidence. They are the future of the company and their voice matters a lot. This allows them to experience that at a tactical level. The second benefit is is richer problem solving session that is well rounded by including content from those deep into the problem as well as those far removed. The joint problem solving allows not just the team but the company to develop outcomes that have buy-in from across the board. This leads to quicker and more effective implementation and eventually value creation for the business.
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 stressing ideas to concept or a concrete decision without resonating 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 at Perpetual Talent Solutions 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.
We incorporate a process for dissent. For larger initiatives, we begin with a short-written brief, then employ three diverse stakes (a practitioner, a client-facing lead, and an external team member) to red-team the brief in writing prior to the meeting. We collect their notes asynchronously to avoid groupthink, review what is relevant for the owner, who then revises the notes and calls the decision. This process has surfaced risks we would have missed, clarified trade-offs early on, and has reduced the amount of work that has to be re-done because more voices shape the plan before it solidifies. It has also built trust because people see their point of view coming through in the final call, even if we do not take every suggestion.
I've found the best way to include diverse perspectives in decision-making is to design the process so they can't be skipped. In my consulting practice, I build what I call structured dissent, where, by design, every major policy or initiative review includes people who will be most affected by the change and not just those in leadership roles pushing the change. It does slow the process slightly, but we see significant improvement in the accuracy and adoption rate across all levels of participation.
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. At Tinkogroup, a data services company specializing in data annotation and processing, 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.
To ensure diverse perspectives in decision-making, I introduced cross-functional advisory teams that included employees from different departments, experience levels, and backgrounds, from field staff to senior leaders. This replaced traditional top-down decisions with collaborative discussions where every voice mattered. When we redesigned our employee benefits program, the advisory team's input led to stronger offerings in mental health support, family leave, and flexible work, areas especially valued by our diverse workforce. The impact was clear: engagement and satisfaction rose, turnover dropped, and the quality of our decisions improved by giving employees a seat at the table.
One approach I've found particularly effective for ensuring diverse perspectives in decision-making is our weekly cross-functional prioritization meetings. We bring together team members from technology, product development, and client services to collaboratively review and decide on our product roadmap priorities. Having representatives from these different areas means we benefit from multiple viewpoints when evaluating bug fixes and feature requests, which leads to more balanced decisions. This collaborative approach has significantly improved our product development outcomes by ensuring we're not just addressing technical concerns but also considering business impact and client needs. The result has been more thoughtful prioritization and ultimately products that better serve our diverse customer base.
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. At Sociabble, 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.
I've found that active listening is crucial for including diverse perspectives in our decision-making processes. During a challenging project where team members initially had conflicting viewpoints, I focused on creating an open dialogue where everyone felt comfortable sharing their insights without fear of judgment. This approach prevented any single perspective from dominating the conversation and allowed us to develop a more comprehensive solution that incorporated multiple viewpoints. The result was not only a stronger final outcome that exceeded our initial expectations, but also increased trust and collaboration among team members who felt their contributions were genuinely valued.
Hi there, I'm Justin Brown, co-creator of The Vessel, a purpose-driven personal development platform. I lead our marketing and content ops — series-based campaigns, conversion-focused pages, and AI workflows—so I sit in a lot of decisions that affect brand, customers, and ops. 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. Hope this is helpful! Thank you! Justin Brown Co-Founder, The Vessel https://thevessel.io/
One approach we use is our "one voice at a time" rule, where each person shares their perspective once to help inform our decision. This keeps conversations balanced so no one dominates and ensures every voice is heard, which is something I really value as an introverted leader. For team members who prefer other forms of communication, we also use surveys or quick votes to capture input in different ways, anonymously as often as possible. This structure has helped us get more thoughtful, diverse perspectives in the mix, leading to better decisions and stronger buy-in over time.
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.
We incorporate varying viewpoints by alternating who participates in major decisions. As we refined our onboarding process, we did a few external onboarding projects involving Virtual Assistants based in other countries who work regularly with clients. They identified problems management did not, such as ambiguous turn of message conversations and uncertain instructions. Their feedback decreased support tickets and simplified onboarding. The habit educated us that diversity isn't merely about background, it's about point of view. Those closest to work are usually clearest, and bringing them in yields stronger results and stronger teams.
I seek the different viewpoints through a structured review process involving each area, whether it is technicians or office staff, before any major decision is made. Each individual inputs a written recommendation regarding patient experience, operational efficiency and risk. Through this mechanism, I am able to obtain the perspectives from those who work directly with patients and technology on a daily basis, and it allows me to identify problems before they grow. As we developed our WaveLight Plus LASIK protocol, this method of inclusion provided information concerning minor calibration differences in the patient setup that had been missed by the engineers. By working to correct this problem, it allowed dramatic improvement in the accuracy of the procedure and a 12% reduction in chair time. This demonstrated the fact that through consistent inclusion of ground level perspective, superior outcomes for patients and accountability for the team can be realized.
We have several groups & committees at our organization which contribute to the organization's decision-making processes. Firstly, we have our Senior Leadership group which is comprised of Officers & Directors, responsible for spearheading organizational goals & initiatives. We also have a Strategic Planning Committee, which is comprised of employees from all levels at our organization. This committee is responsible for developing and tracking progress of objectives across all different areas of the company. We have a Managers & Supervisors group, which is composed of anyone who has a direct report. This group is utilized to solicit feedback for things such as implementing/updating policies, procedures & best practices; as well as acting as intermediaries between organizational leadership and employees, as it relates to carrying out the day-to-day work. Finally, we have a Wellness Committee, which is responsible for coming up with morale & wellness ideas to be implemented via various forms at the agency (e.g. company parties, communication posts, community events, etc.). This is a voluntary committee that anyone can participate in throughout the year. We also solicit feedback for consideration from fireside chats with leadership, agency staff meetings, and supervision meetings. Having a multi-faceted approach gives everyone the opportunity to participate in some fashion and have a "voice" in various decision-making processes at our organization.
One thing I've found works is intentionally bringing colleagues from across other departments and job levels into early conversations rather than waiting until decisions are almost made. For instance, in evaluating a new customer service tool, I didn't just have the managers in the room but also some of my frontline agents; even a couple of sales reps who filled their quarterlies with escalations. Their viewpoints surfaced pain points that a leadership team running solo would have overlooked, perhaps including difficulties with integration of existing workflows. So we went for one that could be implemented across teams more feasibly and had significantly more buy-in on release. In doing so, we not only made better decisions but also bred a culture in which employees felt that their voices truly mattered and shaped results.
As CEO, I'm always conscious of the responsibility that comes with charting our company's course. Whether I'm making a relatively small decision—like selecting a new vendor—or evaluating which large organizations we should approach as strategic partners, I treat every choice with equal care and respect. One guiding principle I always bring to the table is soliciting, listening to, and seriously weighing diverse perspectives. At Heirloom, we've intentionally built a team with variety in cultural backgrounds, professional experience, educational paths—and yes, age. That diversity strengthens our thinking and leads to better decisions. Before both formal and informal meetings—whether over lunch or in the boardroom—I often give the team a heads-up: "I'll be asking for your viewpoints on this upcoming decision." For example, if I mention that a corporation is interested in partnering with us for a product expansion, the team inevitably surfaces fresh insights, new ideas, and cautions that our initial working group might've overlooked. Sometimes those contributions require deeper research or additional data. But again and again, their input—shaped by their roles on the team, their experiences as product users, or their engagement in industry and social discourse—elevates our decision-making. To leaders everywhere, I offer this reminder: sometimes your next valuable perspective is just a desk away. Cultivate a culture of respect and inclusion—and you'll unlock more creative solutions and stronger outcomes for your organization.
At Cafely, one way that I try to include voices in our decision-making is by allocating time in the meetings for every voice to be heard. In the early days, it was clear that only a handful of the more outgoing individuals (myself included) were contributing to the conversation. From that point forward, we started to have all team members in person at a round table, and everyone had to have their voices and thoughts heard before we discussed moving forward. What we got from that discussion surprised me. We got a lot of our best ideas (like the wellness drink pairings that are driving repetitive sales now) from team members who are usually quieter, and we thought they were less engaged, but actually weren't. It has significantly improved our results because these decisions actually come from a wider array of experiences, and the team feels more ownership in what we create together.