☄️ 3 Decision Frameworks That Kill Bloat

10 team members. 2-hour meeting. 0 decisions.

Sounds familiar?

We all have been there…

The meeting ends with no decision made and a follow-up meeting scheduled.

Even research suggests that 73% of your employees are doing other work during "decision meetings."

Fix this with three battle-tested frameworks to decide and move fast:

RAPID Framework by BAIN

Bain & Co. came up with this simple framework to maximize every decision.

Every decision gets exactly 5 roles assigned before any discussion starts.

R - Recommend: ONE person who does 80% of the work and presents options

A - Agree: Maximum 3 people whose approval is mandatory (legal, compliance, technical feasibility)

P - Perform: The team that executes once decided

I - Input: Subject experts who provide data and insights

D - Decide: ONE person who makes the final call and owns the outcome.

A fintech startup I know used RAPID to cut their feature approval time from 3 weeks to 3 days.

The product manager (R) brought data-backed recommendations. The CTO (A) had veto power on technical feasibility. The CEO (D) made the final call. Engineering leads (I) provided implementation estimates. Dev team (P) executed once decided.

No more "let's circle back" or "who owns this?" Everyone knows their lane before walking in.

MECE (McKinsey's Analysis Framework)

MECE is short for Mutually Exclusive, Collectively Exhaustive.

Translation: organize options so nothing overlaps and nothing's missed.

This is a simple but extremely effective framework.

Let’s use Airbnb as an example.

The problem statement is that the team has to choose between 3 markets to expand into Asia. Markets are Japan, China, and South Korea.

In the conventional approach, you would first find the target groups of Airbnb. And calculate the market with a formula, something like this:

Market = sum(number of people in target groups * average money spent by each group)

But this would have too much overlap between various target groups.

MECE helps here to cut the noise:

First, pick the market based on two factors: regulation and maturity.

Regulation: Friendly | Neutral | Hostile

Market maturity: Nascent | Growing | Mature

Then, drop each country into one box.

Only Japan landed in “Friendly + Nascent.”

Decision made.

Ten minutes of MECE > two hours of talking in circles.

Jobs-to-Be-Done (Clayton Christensen's Customer Framework)

Customers don’t want “features” — they want a job done. Simple.

Spotify’s job → “Play any song instantly, anywhere.”

Zoom’s job → “Feel like we’re in the same room, minus travel.”

Workmate’s job → “Automate and optimize meeting scheduling tasks.”

Notice the pattern: one clear job guides the roadmap as a north star.

How to use it in your next meeting:

1. State the core job in one sentence.

2. Ask after every idea: “Does this make the job faster, cheaper, or more satisfying?”

   1. Yes → keep talking.

   2. No → cut it, move on.

JTBD turns feature debates into a binary filter.

One sentence of job clarity can save an hour of circular discussion.

Bottom Line

Freestyling meetings feel like you are moving fast until you burn two hours and decide on nothing.

Then you have to find time for another meeting that works for everyone.

All of a sudden you lost a week.

RAPID, MECE, and JTBD turn that chaos into clear roles, clear analysis, and one-sentence priorities.

Pick your worst recurring meeting.

1. Assign RAPID roles.

2. Bring one MECE slide.

3. Anchor every idea to a single JTBD.

Watch a two-hour slog shrink to 20 focused minutes leading to high-output work.

Until next time,

David Lobo

Head of Growth, Workmate

P.S. Still losing hours just scheduling those meetings? Hand the back-and-forth to Workmate and protect your focus time. Join the waitlist.