Avoiding The Consensus Trap

On a sunny afternoon off-site, Estée Lauder’s HR leadership team gathered for a crucial “Take the Work Out” session. The setting was a world apart from the company’s New York headquarters and its quiet (and often unwritten) rituals of corporate formality, with lounge-style seating and open access to an outdoor area under the welcoming spring sun. Gabe Glasscock, chief of staff to the CHRO, hoped the relaxed atmosphere would encourage a different kind of thinking.

This wasn’t just another off-site. It was happening at a breaking point familiar to many organizations: The team had too many competing projects on their plate, with no clear mechanism to prioritize their efforts on the work that really mattered. What made this particular session remarkable was that it was happening at the executive level, where such pressures are rarely acknowledged.

As Gabe explained, “This conversation and struggle is usually felt furthest from the top of the house, rarely reaching the executive team. Leadership teams are accustomed to competing priorities and interests. But here was a leadership team finally saying, ‘If we don’t change, the system will break.’”

They began with a calendar audit. It’s the kind of exercise that’s easy to write off—until powerful patterns start to surface. Time sinks. Redundant meetings. Invisible obligations hiding in plain sight. Suddenly, what had felt like a vague sense of overload became something concrete they could name . . . and start to change. The next step would be choosing tasks, meetings and projects to eliminate from the HR executive team’s workload.

Rather than presenting his own plan, Gabe introduced a new approach he’d learned from working with [consulting partner] August: Safe to Try. The idea was simple: Anyone can make a Proposal. Proposals don’t need everyone to say yes. They just need no one to say no. The bar isn’t full, 100 percent agreement—it’s the absence of objection.

“I’m not trying to get everyone to say yes, this is a good idea,” Gabe told the HR leaders. “I just need to make sure there are no strong ‘no’s.’ And if something feels risky, we’ll check back in a month to see how it’s going. And if there is a ‘no,’ what is the data that tells us it may cause harm?”

As the afternoon progressed, the energy shifted from skepticism to possibility. When discussing a time-consuming annual process, Michael O’Hare, then chief human resources officer, boldly proposed: “I want to kill it.”

He wasn’t exaggerating. The process he was referencing typically consumed thousands of hours across 20 to 30 people over three months—a solid 10 percent of the annual workload for at least a dozen employees. It also produced a hundred-slide PowerPoint deck. The proposal? Replace it with a simple white paper.

The team was relieved at the thought, but unsure about the practical reality. However, instead of the defensive reaction such a statement might normally provoke, the team asked the right question: Is it Safe to Try?

Only one concern surfaced: Junior talent would lose important development time with senior leaders. Rather than letting this concern derail the proposal, the team acknowledged it as valid while still moving forward with the change.

“We’ll figure that part out,” someone noted, “but that shouldn’t stop us from drafting a note to the CEO right now saying we want to do a white paper instead.”

The shift was immediate. A note was sent, and the proposal moved forward.

The ripple effect was far-reaching. It saved significant time for dozens of HR professionals—time they did not have anyway due to their plates already being overloaded with more pressing, time-sensitive priorities. Soon, streamlining workloads by leveraging Safe to Try was adopted across other functions and business areas. Conservative estimates are that hundreds of employees have reclaimed weeks of productive time. More importantly, the CHRO demonstrated through the Safe to Try mindset that sacred cows could be challenged, leading to more agile decision-making throughout HR.

In the months that followed, Claire Macintyre, then an HR executive with Estée Lauder and now chief people officer at Sam’s Club, leveraged the principle of no “no’s” as she led the C-Suite through discussions focused on potential radical evolutions of the operating model. Another prominent member of the leadership team emerged from their office with a renewed mantra that is spreading throughout all of HR: “Progress Even Over Perfection.” The phrase became shorthand for the company’s evolving approach to work—focusing on what truly matters rather than getting caught in bureaucratic processes.

What began as a single afternoon at a much-needed off-site had led to changes across the organization, challenging long-held assumptions about how work should be done. The Safe to Try mindset had proven its value not through training or slide decks, but through a real, high-stakes decision that could have gone either way.

Consider for a moment just how crucial decision-making is to your own organization’s success. Every action you choose to pursue—or not—stems from a decision. The way people collaborate on these choices shapes business outcomes, along with impacting every relationship within the team. When decision-making becomes bogged down by uncertainty, high stakes and power struggles, it can bring your entire operation to a grinding halt.

Not only that, your team’s decision-making process serves as the blueprint for its cultural identity. The moments when decisions are made reveal your true beliefs and values, often more powerfully than any mission statement or company handbook. Through our decisions, we implicitly reward certain behaviors and discourage others. Who wields authority? How is that authority shared or hoarded? Whose voice carries weight? How are diverse perspectives incorporated or sidelined?

Like water carving paths through rock, these repeated behaviors create channels through which all your work flows. They determine who speaks up in meetings, how ideas move from concept to reality and whether people feel safe taking risks. These practices form the invisible architecture of your team’s culture. Similar to physical architecture, organizations either create spaces where people thrive and do their best work, or they build barriers that slow everything down.

Understanding these underlying cultural patterns is key to unraveling why decision-making often feels so difficult and fraught with obstacles.

How It Works

Safe to Try decision-making offers a refreshing alternative by accepting what you likely already know intuitively: that reaching 100 percent certainty is a fantasy. No matter how many spreadsheets you create or scenarios you analyze, you can never guarantee a decision is right.

This five-step approach shines when your team is tackling a complex decision that needs different perspectives and quick action. The best part? When your team members know their voices matter and their concerns will be heard, they’re much more likely to get behind decisions and move forward together, even if the solution isn’t their personal favorite.

Here are the fundamental steps for making this approach work:

1. Share a Proposal. The process begins with the decision owner sharing a clear proposal, framed as “I propose we . . ..”

The proposal should focus on taking one actionable step forward rather than seeking perfection, emphasizing what needs to start or stop happening. To ensure that everyone is on the same page, proposals should also include a way to assess potential outcomes. Discuss what success or failure might look like and when the team will revisit and evaluate the proposal.

2. Ask Clarifying Questions. Once the decision owner has made their clear, specific proposal, other team members have a chance to ask about anything that still seems murky. All participants are invited to ask clarifying questions to ensure they fully understand the proposal. Only the proposer responds at this stage, answering each question one at a time, without a broader discussion.

3. Gather Reactions. Next comes the reaction round, where each participant shares their thoughts on the proposal. This step is crucial for gathering diverse perspectives without derailing progress. A highly effective and research-backed method is a “round,” where you hear from each person in turn without interruption.

4. Amend and Clarify. After receiving feedback, the decision owner may amend and clarify the proposal based on the reactions shared. This iterative process encourages collaboration while maintaining the authority of the decision owner.

5. Check for Objections. A critical aspect of Safe to Try is distinguishing between valid objections and mere hesitations. As discussed earlier, the default is “yes” unless someone voices a valid objection. This framework emphasizes progress and encourages a culture of experimentation, allowing teams to move forward even when there are differing opinions.

Valid objections are those that indicate a proposal could cause immediate harm or set the team back significantly. In contrast, hesitations might express concerns about potential issues without presenting a clear reason to halt progress.

The difference between hesitations and valid objections lies in their potential impact.

Testing Objections

Use the following rubric to determine whether an objection is valid:

In this part of the process, the person with the objection has a responsibility to propose an edit that makes the proposal Safe to Try. Because the goal is to act, not to wait and continue to debate.

And here’s one final step: Decide and Try. The proposal serves as a map, and now it’s time to commit to following it. Once all objections have been dealt with, move forward. It’s Safe to Try. . . so try. Keep your minds open, don’t obsess about perfection and capture your learnings.