Which decisions in your company are being made by default because nobody is actually making the decision?
In PwC’s May 2025 survey of 678 executives and board members, 57% said they were missing opportunities because they couldn’t make decisions fast enough.
Leaders often look at the risk associated with making a given decision. But waiting to make a decision receives much less scrutiny because it has the appearance of being neutral.
Yet every delay keeps current spending in place, leaves important roles open, renews existing commitments, or gives competitors more time.
Delaying a decision is actually a decision to maintain the status quo.
A Coin Flip Revealed Our Bias
University of Chicago economist Steven Levitt designed an unusual experiment. People wrestling with major choices used a virtual coin toss to decide whether to change jobs, leave a relationship, return to school, or maintain the status quo.
People flipped more than 20,000 coins. Heads directed them toward change; tails pointed them toward staying put. Levitt surveyed them after two months and then again after six months.
The coin actually influenced real behavior. People who received heads made changes more frequently. When making bigger decisions and changes, they reported greater happiness six months later than those who got tails and didn’t make shifts.
The conclusion: making decisions that lead to change creates more positive results than standing still.
Delay Hides Who’s Accountable
Making a clear decision creates visible accountability. Delay, however, is harder to trace. When negative things happen because you stood still, it’s easy to point to “the circumstances” as the culprit of problems vs. the choice to do nothing.
I’ve seen this pattern across organizations. A weak product gets another planning cycle. A toxic leader remains in a key position. A new market pilot continues consuming resources without receiving a clear yes or no to proceed.
Each deferred decision preserves an existing commitment. No one is asked to defend the choice to stand still or account for its cost.
Jeff Bezos addressed the cost of slow decisions in a classic Amazon shareholder letter. He argued that most decisions should be made with about 70 percent of the desired information because being slow is an expensive choice.
Require a Business Case for “Waiting”
Need more evidence or better timing for a product launch. Those are legitimate reasons for a delay. But the discipline most teams need is to stop granting extensions by default, without looking at the consequences. Use this sequence:
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- Identify stalled decisions. Record every strategic, staffing, product, and investment choice that has remained unresolved for more than 30 days.
- Calculate the cost of another quarter. Estimate the money, customer impact, employee capacity, and competitive position that continued delay puts at risk.
- Authorize the extension. Name one owner, specify the evidence still needed, and set an expiration date. When that date arrives, explicitly decide to proceed, stop, or approve a new extension with an updated business case.
Every decision needs accountability, whether leaders act immediately or extend the deadline. Once delay must clear the same hurdle as another action, teams can see what waiting costs and decide whether the time is truly worth buying.
A postponed decision is a decision to maintain the status quo, even when nobody’s officially accountable for it.
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