On Basecamp
Bad decisions are bound to happen. How bad decisions are created means everything.
Individual
“No one is perfect.”
When it comes to an individual making a decision, faults and weaknesses are expected.
Think about this from the perspective of an engineering manager: should one ever let an engineer design and implement an entire feature without any input or approval from anyone else?
Collective
“All for one and one for all.”
If a group makes a decision together, the outcome is always tolerated.
Think about the value of making a group decision when it comes to things like: architecture proposals, code reviews, testing and verification.
In other words
Why would you let one person make such an important decision without input from the rest of the team?
My recommendation
Make more decisions democratically.
Democracy is something you need to further implement in your workplace. If you have any doubt about this, ask your employees:
“Would our company benefit from additional democratic decision making processes?”
You must address this problem at its root cause, otherwise you risk a recurrent controversy.