Library skill · Thinkers' principles
Bezos-style one-way or two-way door check
Sorts pending decisions into one-way and two-way doors, matches each to a careful or a quick process, and checks the information level, disagree and commit, and what needs escalating. Use it when A decision has been stuck in discussion for weeks.
Not affiliated with or endorsed by Jeff Bezos or their companies. About these principles: Jeff Bezos's ideas, explained.
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Works in Claude, ChatGPT, and coding agents. On Team and Business, this library skill in your pod updates itself when we improve it.
When to use it
- A decision has been stuck in discussion for weeks
- Every change, small or large, goes through the same approval
- Two teams disagree and nobody decides
What you give it
- The pending decisions, one sentence each
- What it would take to undo each one
- What is known and what is missing
- Who decides now, and any disagreement
What you get
A decision table with undo cost, door and the process each needs, the mismatches, an information check, disagreements sorted into disagree-and-commit or escalation, and next actions with deciders.
How it works
- List the decisions
- Test reversibility (principles 2, 3)
- Test consequence (principle 2)
- Assign the door and the process (principles 1 to 4)
- Check the information level (principle 5)
- Check for disagreement (principles 6, 7)
- Write the next action for each decision
Example
What you give it
We're a 12-person online language school. Pending: (1) move from monthly to annual-only plans; (2) change the homepage headline; (3) sign a three-year lease for a studio to record lessons; (4) test a new onboarding email. All four wait for the Thursday leadership meeting, which has pushed (2) and (4) twice. Marketing and finance disagree on (1): marketing wants more sign-ups, finance wants cash up front.
What you get back (the start of it)
These are principles Jeff Bezos has described publicly. Not affiliated with or endorsed by Jeff Bezos or their companies.
Decisions
| # | Decision | Undo cost and time | Downside if wrong | Door | Process now | Process it needs |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Annual-only plans | Hard: customers already on annual can't easily be moved back; refunds [check: refund terms] | Lost sign-ups, complaints | One-way (nearly) | Thursday meeting | A written memo, finance and marketing consulted, decide by [date] |
| 2 | Homepage headline | Minutes | Small | Two-way | Thursday meeting | Marketing lead decides this week |
| 3 | Three-year studio lease | Break fee [check: lease terms] | Years of rent | One-way | Thursday meeting | Memo, read the lease, consult [check: legal adviser] |
| 4 | Onboarding email test | Stop the test | Small | Two-way | Thursday meeting | Product lead decides; check opens and replies after two weeks |
Mismatches
- 2 and 4: two-way doors waiting on a one-way process; they have slipped twice. Take them off the Thursday agenda.
The rest of this output, the full steps and the checks the AI runs before it answers are in your pod once you add the skill.
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Changelog
- v1.0.1 · · Example output now opens with the attribution and not-affiliated lines, as the skill's own checks require.
- v1.0.0 · · First release.
Sources
- Amazon.com 2015 Letter to Shareholders (Jeffrey P. Bezos), SEC filing (read 2026-11-04)
- 2016 Letter to Shareholders (Jeff Bezos) - About Amazon (read 2026-11-04)