Business leaders should develop rituals that serve as "guardrails that keep technology serving culture, not the other way around," according to artificial intelligence entrepreneur Shishir Mehrotra.
"While technology can accelerate decisions, rituals are what ensure that acceleration moves in the right direction," he said in a recent Fast Company commentary.
Mehrotra has been at the forefront of AI for many years. He founded Coda, an AI productivity platform, in 2014 and is now CEO of AI writing assistant Grammarly, which acquired his company late last year and recently rebranded to Superhuman.
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His four rituals for decision making in the age of AI are based on a talk he gave at the 2024 Lenny & Friends Summit in San Francisco.
"I'll explore more rituals in the future," he said in the Fast Company piece, "but today we're focusing on these four decision rituals because, in the age of AI, the best leaders won't just make better decisions, they'll build better ways of deciding."
Ask the right questions
Mehrotra said in his Fast Company commentary that every decision begins with an "eigenquestion," a term he borrowed from linear algebra.
"Just as an eigenvector represents the most defining direction in a multi-dimensional space, eigenquestions are those that, once answered, resolve many others," he said.
Later in the post, he said business leaders should "prioritize questions before answers."
"Identify the eigenquestion in every major decision and resist the temptation to chase flashy but irrelevant options," he said.
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Build a better decision process
"When making decisions, most companies still rely on one-way feedback," Mehrotra said in Fast Company, "comments on documents that are read inconsistently, weighted unevenly, and buried in threads."
Artificial intelligence agents can be used to redesign these feedback loops, he said, by moving away from, "one-way comment threads to structured, two-way interactions where AI artifacts help accelerate clarity."
The two-way interactions used at his companies are called "Dory" from "Finding Nemo" and "Pulse," he said.
"Dory (named after the fish who asks all the questions) lets team members submit and upvote questions after reading a write-up," he said. "Pulse gathers anonymous sentiment, allowing each person to express their position on the decision without being influenced by groupthink."
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Create the right forums
"Even with better inputs, many decisions get bogged down in recurring, one-size-fits-all meetings," Mehrotra wrote for Fast Company. "The better question is: Does this forum accelerate or slow down decisions?"
Grammarly workers have a flexible daily hour-long forum called "Catalyst," he said, in which project leaders submit topics in advance along with prework. "Half the time, completing the prework reveals the decision, making the meeting unnecessary," he said.
Involve the right stakeholders
"The best rituals for decision making don't just capture feedback," Mehrotra said in the Fast Company piece, "they ensure the right people are involved at the right time, with clarity on how much their input matters."
As an example, he said HubSpot (NYSE:HUBS) Chief Technology Officer Dharmesh Shah tags his comments to team members with "flashtags" indicating if it's a strongly held opinion or just a suggestion.
Mehrotra said Grammarly utilizes a similar practice indicating whether a stakeholder wants proactive or reactive feedback.
"By combining intensity and timing, feedback becomes legible," he said. "Teams avoid wasted effort, leaders avoid being misinterpreted, and decisions accelerate with fewer surprises."
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