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Why Smart Leaders Make Messy Decisions · The Science of Leading

• 0:00
  Welcome to the show-Edwin, I want to start with a leadership behavior
• 0:04
  that gets rewarded constantly and probably shouldn't: answering too fast.
• 0:08
  There's this moment where a leader jumps in with,
• 0:12
  "Here's what we're doing," and everyone thinks,
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  okay, that's decisiveness.
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  But I'm starting to wonder if we're just rewarding speed over actual
• 0:20
  thinking.
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  That confusion happens a lot.
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  Speed gets mistaken for certainty.
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  Sometimes it is decisiveness, but often it's just rushed judgment presented
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  confidently.
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  And because it sounds clean in the moment,
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  nobody challenges it.
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  And that's the expensive part.
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  It looks like leadership in real time.
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  Then three months later you realize nobody tested the assumptions,
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  nobody named the trade-offs, and now the team is stuck executing a bad
• 0:46
  decision that felt good for about thirty seconds.
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  Exactly.
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  And the data on this is fairly sobering.
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  McKinsey asked senior executives about strategic decisions,
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  and seventy-two percent said bad decisions were about as frequent as
• 1:00
  good ones, or even the norm.
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  That tells you this isn't a fringe issue-it's built into how many
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  organizations
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  operate.
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  Seventy-two percent is... uncomfortable.
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  If that many leaders admit decision quality is inconsistent,
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  then the issue probably isn't intelligence.
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  It's something structural.
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  Yes.
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  Not intelligence-process.
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  Smart people can still create very poor decision environments.
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  Especially in unstructured meetings.
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  One person dominates, someone introduces a late anecdote that shifts
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  the direction, and then the leader calls it "alignment." It isn't alignment.
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  It's social pressure.
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  Social pressure with slides.
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  That's basically half of corporate decision-making right there.
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  So when we say "slow down," what does that actually mean?
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  Because leaders hear that and assume it turns into more meetings and
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  more overhead.
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  It doesn't require more meetings.
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  Usually just a bit more discipline.
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  First, define the decision in one sentence-not the topic,
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  the actual decision.
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  Second, separate facts, assumptions,
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  and preferences.
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  Those get blended constantly.
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  Third, clarify roles: who recommends,
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  who decides, who needs input, and who simply needs to be informed.
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  That structure might add ten minutes,
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  but it can prevent months of rework.
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  So the goal isn't to make leaders
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  slower.
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  It's to stop them from being fast in the wrong direction-like rushing
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  toward an answer before the question is even clear.
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  That's exactly it.
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  Good decision systems don't eliminate speed.
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  They protect it.
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  They make sure the organization moves quickly after the logic is clear,
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  not before.
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  This is where the McKinsey framework helps,
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  right?
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  Because not every decision needs the same level of structure.
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  There are big-bet decisions, cross-cutting ones,
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  delegated ones, and then the quick ad hoc calls.
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  Yes,
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  and problems start when leaders treat all four the same.
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  A big-bet decision-like entering a new market or restructuring-needs
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  rigor.
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  More options, clearer assumptions,
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  visible risks.
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  Cross-cutting decisions fail because no one owns the seams between teams.
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  Delegated decisions should stay close to the work.
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  And ad hoc decisions need to stay lightweight,
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  or they slow everything down.
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  The "seams" point is real.
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  In cross-functional decisions,
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  that's exactly where things fall apart.
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  Everyone assumes someone else owns the hard part.
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  And that's why decision
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  rights matter.
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  Who recommends, who decides, who can veto,
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  who owns execution.
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  Without that clarity, cross-functional work becomes performance rather
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  than progress.
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  And none of these tools are particularly glamorous.
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  Decision rights, an executive sponsor,
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  a devil's advocate, an assumption check... it's not exciting,
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  but it's the difference between thinking and improvising.
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  The devil's
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  advocate is especially important.
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  Not someone who argues for the sake of it,
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  but someone responsible for testing the logic.
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  What would have to be true for this to fail?
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  Which assumption carries the most risk?
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  What evidence would actually change our minds?
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  That last one-what evidence
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  would change our minds-that's the line.
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  Because once a team can't answer that,
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  they're not deciding anymore.
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  They're defending.
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  Exactly.
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  And to make this repeatable, there's a simple loop I find useful: Listen,
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  Analyze, Act, Learn.
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  Listen means gathering the right inputs,
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  not just the loudest ones.
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  Analyze means testing assumptions and alternatives.
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  Act means making a clear decision with ownership.
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  And Learn means coming back afterward to evaluate what happened.
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  Most teams skip that last step,
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  which is why they keep repeating the same mistakes.
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  Right-if you skip
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  Listen, you're blind.
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  Skip Analyze, you're impulsive.
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  Skip Act, nothing happens.
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  Skip Learn... you just keep thinking you're getting better when you're
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  not.
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  That's a fair summary.
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  I saw this play out in a really ordinary way.
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  A leadership team kept debating whether to centralize customer support.
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  Weeks of models, cost analysis,
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  service levels.
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  And eventually someone realized the real decision wasn't about structure-it
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  was about what they were optimizing for.
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  Consistency, speed, or customer intimacy.
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  We never defined that upfront,
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  so everything else was noise.
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  That's a classic case.
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  Teams think they have a decision conflict,
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  when in reality they have a question-definition problem.
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  I've seen similar situations where entire discussions shifted once the
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  real constraint was named.
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  Until then, everyone is solving a slightly different problem.
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  Let's talk
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  about traps.
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  Confirmation bias is obvious-falling in love with the first good story.
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  But after a bad outcome, I see leaders swing the other way and start
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  centralizing everything.
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  Yes, a kind of overcorrection.
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  One decision fails, and suddenly every decision needs senior approval.
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  It feels responsible at first,
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  but it quickly slows the organization and weakens accountability.
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  People stop deciding and start escalating.
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  Which turns into an entire
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  culture of forwarding problems upward instead of solving them.
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  Exactly.
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  Delegation only works if boundaries are clear.
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  What you own, what level of risk you can take,
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  when to escalate.
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  Without that, people either freeze or escalate too early.
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  And on the cross-functional
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  side, too many people in the room can actually make decisions worse.
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  There's this assumption that more perspectives automatically lead to
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  better outcomes, but sometimes it just raises the social cost of saying
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  the uncomfortable thing.
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  Consensus is often confused with clarity.
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  Consensus asks if everyone can accept the outcome.
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  Clarity asks whether we understand who is deciding,
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  why, and what success looks like.
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  You can have perfect agreement and still have a very weak decision.
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  And
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  avoiding that clarity usually comes from wanting harmony.
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  But not naming the decision owner doesn't remove conflict-it just delays
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  it until execution, where it's more expensive.
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  Exactly.
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  Delayed conflict tends to compound.
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  This is why structure isn't bureaucracy.
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  Bureaucracy adds friction without improving thinking.
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  Structure improves thinking so friction doesn't spread later.
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  It protects decision quality and,
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  importantly, trust.
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  Because people can accept a tough decision if they
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  understand how it was made.
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  What erodes trust is when the process feels arbitrary or political.
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  Yes.
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  Once people believe decisions are arbitrary,
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  they stop contributing their best thinking.
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  At that point, decision quality declines even further.
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  So maybe the real
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  question isn't just whether a leader is fast or even whether the decision
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  is right.
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  It's what they're optimizing for-control,
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  speed, certainty, or the long-term quality of decision-making across
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  the organization.
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  That's the more useful question.
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  And if you're thinking about how to bring more structure into your own
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  decision-making-without slowing everything down-you can test OAD's tools,
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  including behavioral frameworks,
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  for free at o-a-d-dot-a-i.
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  It's a practical way to make decisions more consistent and more reliable.
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  Which,
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  at the end of the day, is what people actually want.
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  Not just fast decisions-but better ones.