Some strategic decisions affect the whole future of our organizations, but most don’t. Most decisions are or should be, incremental steps toward a common goal. The problem is that we are treating all decisions as strategic ones. Of course, data should be at the heart of all strategic decision-making, but data and the analyses of data are not the problems.
The problem is decisions wander up and down in our organizations, slowing things down. The result is employees wanting to move forward are left bouncing between resignation, boredom, and disengagement. We expect the employees to take the initiative but do not allow them to act on them. Of course, we are destroying both commitment and responsibility.
We must remove inefficient hierarchies, bureaucracy, and stupid rules and face problems with insecure bosses acting as gatekeepers using power to polish their own egos. Organizations must put forward an actionable strategy that every employee can use to make their decisions. We need to distribute decision authority radically if we want to move forward fast enough to capture future possibilities.
Slow decision-making is killing all the fun.
