Let me tell you something that might make you uncomfortable: in your organisation right now, slow decisions are killing you faster than bad ones ever could.
I don’t care if you’re in a fast-growing startup or a slow-moving corporate giant. Whilst you’re scheduling another meeting to discuss the meeting about the decision, your competitors are moving. Your best people are getting frustrated. Opportunities are evaporating.
The executive’s most valuable currency isn’t money or influence. It’s time and clarity. And most leaders are haemorrhaging both.
The Question That Changes Everything
Before we go further, here’s a question I ask every executive I work with when they’re stuck in decision paralysis:
“What type of problem are you actually facing here? Is it complex or complicated?”
The silence that usually follows tells me everything. Most leaders have never stopped to categorise the problem. They just know it feels hard, so they treat everything as chaos requiring endless discussion.
This is where the Cynefin Framework becomes invaluable. It helps leaders categorise problems into five domains:
Simple problems: Obvious cause and effect. Best practice applies. (Processing payroll, renewing licenses)
Complicated problems: Cause and effect exists but requires expertise. Multiple right answers may exist. (Product design, marketing strategy)
Complex problems: Cause and effect only understood in retrospect. You must experiment and learn. (Culture change, entering new markets)
Chaotic problems: No perceivable cause and effect. Act immediately to establish order. (Major crisis, emergency response)
Here’s the issue: most leaders treat everything like it’s chaotic.
Research from Harvard Business Review found that 65% of senior executives reported fear of making the wrong decision as a significant factor in delays. Without frameworks, everything blurs into an undifferentiated mass of “hard problems.” So you default to what feels safest: more information gathering.
The Two-Way Door Principle
Jeff Bezos famously categorised decisions as either “one-way doors” or “two-way doors.”
One-way doors are consequential and nearly irreversible. They require careful consideration. Two-way doors are reversible if you don’t like the outcome, you can go back and choose differently.
In his 2015 shareholder letter, Bezos wrote: “Some decisions are consequential and irreversible… these decisions must be made methodically, carefully, slowly. But most decisions aren’t like that—they are changeable, reversible… If you walk through and don’t like what you see on the other side, you can’t get back to where you were before.”
Yet most organisations treat two-way door decisions like one-way doors. They apply the same rigorous, time-consuming process to choosing a vendor as they do to a merger. And they squander their ability to move quickly and learn.
The Real Cost of Slow
Let me paint you a picture you’ll recognise.
Leadership team meeting. Important decision needed. But instead of making it:
“Let’s get more data.” “Can we run this by [department/person] first?” “Let’s table this and come back next quarter.”
Meanwhile, three levels down, someone brilliant is updating their LinkedIn profile. Your best customer is taking a call from your competitor. That market opportunity you were “analysing” has been seized by someone who made a decision whilst you scheduled your third steering committee.
Not making a decision is a decision. It’s a decision to accept the status quo. To deprioritise. To signal you’re not really committed.
And your people feel it, even if they don’t say it out loud. They feel it in the energy that drains from the room. In the resignation. In the quiet erosion of trust.
Why We Still Move Slow
If we know slow movement is deadly, why do companies still waste time going around and around?
Because decision-making is emotional, not just rational.
We mistake activity for progress. Scheduling meetings feels like doing something. We’ve conflated inclusion with indecision. We’re addicted to certainty that will never come in complex domains. And we haven’t made the mindsetshift from Chief Analyst to Chief Decider.
The Tim Grover Effect: Taking the Last Shot
Tim Grover, the legendary performance coach who worked with Michael Jordan, talks about the psychology of being a “closer” in his book Relentless.
When Grover worked with Jordan, one mental shift he helped instil was this: champions want the ball when the game is on the line.
1997 NBA Finals, Game 1. Bulls vs Jazz. 82-82 with seconds remaining. Jordan took the shot. It went in. Bulls won.
But Jordan had missed game-winners before. What made him different wasn’t that he never failed. It was that he’d decided his identity was “the person who takes the shot” rather than “the person who avoids failure.”
Grover helped Jordan understand that not taking the shot was worse than missing it. Not taking the shot means you’ve already lost.
When you continuously delay decisions, you’re signalling: “I don’t trust myself to make this call.” And if you don’t trust yourself, why should your team?
That Bulls team became a dynasty because everyone knew that when it mattered, someone was willing to decide and act. That clarity, that confidence, permeated the entire organisation.
How Executive Coaching Develops the Chief Decider Mindset
This is where executive coaching becomes transformational.
A good coach doesn’t give you the answers. They help you develop the internal clarity and confidence to make decisions in ambiguity. They help you see your patterns, challenge your assumptions, and build the muscle of decisive action.
When I work with executives on developing their Chief Decider Mindset, we focus on several key areas:
Identifying their decision-making bottlenecks. Is it fear of judgement? Perfectionism? Unclear values? Lack of frameworks? You can’t shift what you can’t see.
Categorising problems using frameworks like Cynefin. This alone transforms how quickly leaders can assess a situation and know which approach to take. Complex problems don’t need more analysis; they need experiments. Complicated problems don’t need endless meetings; they need expert analysis and a decision.
Building tolerance for discomfort. Decision-making in ambiguity is uncomfortable. We work on expanding your capacity to sit with that discomfort without immediately seeking relief through delay or delegation.
Separating identity from outcomes. You are not your decisions. A wrong decision doesn’t make you a bad leader. But chronic indecision absolutely will undermine your effectiveness.
Creating decision-making rituals. Like Indra Nooyi’s Friday thinking time, establishing practices that support clarity and conviction.
The transformation I’ve seen in clients when they embrace this mindset is remarkable. Suddenly, meetings that used to take an hour take 20 minutes. Decisions that used to linger for months get made in weeks. Teams that felt stuck gain momentum. And the leader themselves reports feeling more energised, more confident, more effective.
Your Team Is Waiting
Here’s the truth: your team doesn’t need you to be perfect. They need you to be decisive.
They need you to gather the relevant information, consider the key perspectives, make a call, and move forward. They need you to create clarity in the chaos. They need you to model that it’s safe to decide and act, even when you don’t have complete certainty.
Right now, there’s a decision sitting on your desk (or in your mind) that you’ve been avoiding. You know what it is. You’ve probably had three meetings about it already. You’re waiting for just a bit more information, or the right timing, or a sign from the universe.
That decision is costing you more than you realise.
It’s costing you time you could be spending on genuine strategic work. It’s costing you the respect of your team who can see you’re avoiding it. It’s costing you opportunities that won’t wait for you to feel comfortable.
So here’s my challenge: What would change if you adopted a Chief Decider’s Mindset today?
Not reckless decision-making. Not ignoring input or data. But genuine ownership of your role as the person who creates clarity and drives forward momentum, even when it’s uncomfortable.
What if you walked into Monday’s meeting and actually made the decision? What if you stopped treating every problem like chaos and started applying the right approach to the right type of problem? What if you gave yourself permission to be wrong occasionally in exchange for being consistently decisive?
Your organisation doesn’t need another meeting. It needs a leader willing to take the shot.
Develop Your Chief Decider’s Mindset
If you’re an executive who knows you need to make faster, more confident decisions but find yourself stuck in patterns of delay and overthinking, executive coaching can help you make that shift.
At MindsetShift, we work with leaders to develop the clarity, frameworks, and confidence to lead decisively in ambiguity. We help you identify what’s holding you back, build practical decision-making systems, and transform how you show up as a leader.
Because the world doesn’t need more analysts. It needs more leaders with a Chief Decider’s Mindset.
