The Decision Hasn’t Changed - The Organisation Has.
Small organisations can make decisions remarkably quickly. Someone identifies a problem, the right people discuss it, a decision is made and work starts - it really should be that simple.
However, as organisations grow, that same sequence becomes undeniably more complicated. More people are affected, more teams have dependencies, budgets get bigger and governance becomes more formal. A decision that once needed two people in a room might now require a business case, several approvals and a meeting three weeks away.
Most of these additions on the face of it, appear perfectly reasonable.
- Finance wants to understand the cost.
- Legal wants to understand the exposure.
- Technology wants to understand the implications.
- Leadership wants appropriate oversight.
The problem occurs when they accumulate…
Growth creates decision latency
Organisations tend to pay attention to whether decisions are made correctly but they pay much less attention to how long the organisation takes to make them - that is the decision latency gap.
A proposal might take two days to develop but six weeks to move through the organisation; waiting for meetings, collecting feedback, seeking approvals and being revised.
Nobody necessarily created unnecessary bureaucracy - it accumulated one sensible step at a time.
Eventually, the process designed to produce better decisions starts getting in the way of making them.
Complexity Multiplies
Decision latency rarely comes from one excessive approval; it comes from the interaction between many reasonable controls.
- Add another stakeholder and there is another diary to coordinate, another perspective to consider and another opportunity for revision.
- Add another governance layer and the decision may need to be documented, reviewed and presented before it can move forward.
- Add more risk controls and teams naturally seek greater certainty before committing.
Individually, each step might add very little time but together, they compound.
Not every decision needs the same process
The deeper problem is that organisations often apply similar governance to very different decisions:
- A costly, difficult-to-reverse decision deserves scrutiny.
- A small, reversible decision probably doesn’t need the same treatment.
As organisations grow, controls designed for exceptional decisions have a habit of becoming the default…
The result isn’t necessarily better decision-making. It is an organisation spending more time deciding how safely it can decide.
Make the Process Fit the Decision
Reducing decision latency does not mean removing governance, it simply means applying the right amount of governance to the decision being made.
Start by asking three questions:
- Who actually needs to make this decision?
- What is the genuine risk if we get it wrong?
- How difficult would it be to reverse?
Low-risk, reversible decisions should be made quickly and close to the work; higher-risk decisions deserve broader consultation and stronger controls.
Measure the waiting, not just the work
Looking at where decisions actually spend their time is typically worth doing - often, the delay isn’t analysis, it is waiting for meetings, approvals or someone else’s input.
Making those delays visible can expose complexity that has gradually become normal.
Good governance should help organisations make better decisions. When it routinely prevents them from making decisions at all, it is time to redesign it.
