Key Questions to Ask When Ordering traffic light red and green

The “Traffic Light” Approach to Problem Solving

This is a guest post from my friend and Meta’s Chief Information Security Officer, Guy Rosen. All of us in work (and life!) must make and escalate decisions. But decisions usually have multiple options to consider with different tradeoffs. Enter Guy’s “traffic light” approach, which uses the colors red, yellow and green to visually represent and evaluate various options.

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Thank you, Guy, for teaching us this method, which has improved our decision-making process and continues to drive better outcomes.

The “Traffic Light” Approach to Problem Solving

By Guy Rosen

Any time you want to proceed with a new product idea, figure out a strategy or decide on a feature, you’ll have a lot of questions to answer: Is it worth it? How will it affect people? Should we build it one way, or another way? Do we have the resources, or the time? Should we proceed at all? How well are the choices we made progressing? Should we shut it down?

These questions need to be resolved. But they don’t exist in isolation: they inform and pull against each other. It can be hard to pin down the right questions to ask, to sort through many valuable opinions, and even harder to know what steps to take, or not take, when the answers and outcomes are ambiguous.

I’ve always found lists of “pros and cons” inefficient. There had to be a better way to frame available options and make a decision with other leaders on my team.

Enter the traffic light! It works like this: every decision or potential decision is color-coded on a matrix as red, yellow, or green. This allows you to see a range of possible futures all at once, and make the best call you can, given what you know. It’s a rubric that has been helpful to me in situations spanning personal dilemmas to product decisions to staffing decisions. While the examples here are product-centric, this approach can be applied to any decision, big or small.

There are three steps to building out the matrix.

• Step One: identify the criteria that you care about.
• Step Two: figure out your options based on that criteria; and
• Step Three: build the matrix, and color-code it, so you can make a good decision. Red — negative for the criteria; Yellow — neutral; and Green — positive for the criteria.

So let’s see this in action:

Step One: Identify the criteria that you care about.

Let’s say you have an idea. Some people will think it’s a great idea, others will think it’s a waste of space. The first step is to lay out all the relevant criteria by which you will judge the idea. Do this by framing the criteria as questions, not statements. They should be inclusive and comprehensive about what the teams care about. And you should number them, so they’re easier to refer to.

So, for example:

Step Two: Figure out your options based on that criteria;

The next step is to address the criteria you’ve identified:

And do the same for all the remaining, various other paths you might decide to take.

You might have more than three variable options. But the matrix loses effectiveness if you have to go to Options D, E, F, G. Pick your top three. Four is pushing it. Five is probably too many. Six is definitely too many.

Step Three: Build the matrix

Using three colors: red, yellow and green, you fill in the matrix so all your options are clearer. Feel free to also consider other color palettes that are more accessible to people with colorblindness.

This will give you a decent overview of the various options in front of you, and the paths you might decide to take. Usually, that’s where the most green is, but not always. The point of this system is to guide you to making the right decision for your organization. You still need to use your best, independent judgment to decide what you’re going to do.

What Comes Next

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Once the matrix is built, you should summarize the options and provide a recommendation. This is the most important visual that you’ll share with the group and where most of the conversation will focus. Without even knowing the options you can clearly see which have more “green” and which have more “red” and which criteria tend to trade off against each other.

With the recommendation given, the final thing to do is make a decision. If you’ve done all the previous work, this should be the easy part. Check the criteria and make your call. Document your work, press forward, and make things happen.

In the end, decision making is a process, not a one-time thing. Any complex organization staffed by insightful, smart people will have a lot to offer. But just as important as the right input is having in place the right decision making structure that will not only take into account competing ideas, it will filter out the bad ones, filter up the good ones, and produce quality work everytime.

Helpful Tips

Here’s some helpful advice on how to make this system work for you:

• Always number the criteria; this way people can say, without ambiguity: “let’s talk about about Issue #2”
• Always label the options: A, B, C, and so on. This is so they’re easier to refer to, and won’t get confused with the enumerated criteria (1, 2, 3, etc.)
• Be explicit about what the “better” answer is. A higher value may be good for reach, but it’s bad for complexity. Be specific about judging the criteria with reference to your goals.
• Be inclusive. Even if you don’t accept a team’s conclusions, it matters that their criteria was considered. Don’t dismiss criteria out of hand. Put it in the matrix.
• One way to test if you’ve got the right criteria is to ask: “If we had an option that satisfied these criteria, do we all agree we’d move forward?” If the answer is still no, continue the conversation. You have more criteria to consider.
• Among your various options: be sure to give people all the information needed to be informed about a particular pathway. You might need to build a mock, or give a presentation. People should feel informed.

If you have thoughts about this system, or your own decision making system, I’d love to read about it in the comments.