“The project’s delayed, deadlines are moving targets, the goal line is shifting, we’re falling further and further behind. Something has to change.” Sound familiar?
The culprit? Too often it’s poorly defined feedback loops, delayed reviews, slow approvals, indecisiveness, and paralysis by analysis that bogs down projects. Add-in the classic “too many cooks in the kitchen” and no wonder 70% of tech related projects fail to meet the desired outcomes according to Boston Consulting Group.
One reason: Far too many teams are waiting in limbo, burning valuable hours while they wait, and wait for feedback, reviews and approvals that never seem to come in a timely fashion. Then we, as leadership, tend to blame the teams for the seemingly unending delays.
In reality, we are the bottleneck, not the team. We are the ones ultimately at fault. Our responsibility is to set-up our teams for success from the start. Faster decision making helps people meet their targets. Excessively delayed decisions not only jeopardize the project, it demoralizes our teams, creates a built-in headwind, and leads to project fatigue that further slows things down.
The Fix? Push Decision-Making Deeper Into the Organization
Stop being the bottleneck. Empower the people you trust to make increasingly more significant decisions. Enter: Susan Scott’s Decision Tree Model from her best seller – Fierce Conversations.
How it Works:
Think of decisions like branches on a tree. Four Types of Decisions:
- Leaf decisions: Just do it, make the decision. No need to report your actions.
- Branch decisions: More substantive decisions, still make the decision, but report what’s happening at regular intervals.
- Trunk decisions: More weighty decisions, vital to the structure of the tree. Announce your intent before acting. Allow leadership to hear it and chime in.
- Root decisions: The tree will come down if we don’t get this right. We only decide after significant input.
By defining decision types and trusting others, we push decision-making deeper into the organization and keep velocity high, allowing leadership to focus on the calls that matter most.
What to Expect:
- Faster feedback loops: Teams are no longer waiting to green-light every deliverable
- Increased ownership: As decision-share is more widely distributed, confidence and responsibility grow. Morale improves.
- Focused Leadership: Managers stop sweating the small stuff and can stay locked in on strategic priorities.
Tip: Time-Box Decision-Making
Parkinson’s Law says – “Work expands to fill the time available for its completion.” If you give a task a certain amount of time to be done, it will take that full amount of time. Instead of asking, “How long will this take?” try, “What can we decide by the end of today?”
The Bottom Line:
If we want to ship faster and hit our deadlines, leaders need to respond faster get out of the way. Push more decisions out to the leaves, trust the team to execute, and step-in when it really counts.
Download the free Decision Tree Guide 1-pager here.
