Time is the enemy of startups, each day cash is consumed against a race to build value, reduce risk, and drive results. The fundamentally broken culture of no decisions is insidious and seems to me to worse now than I can remember.
Casey Dudley
1mo
Offering a boots-on-the-ground perspective about the challenges Will highlights in this insightful post. I relate to Will's observation that teams in matrix organization settings can struggle to move in unison while waiting for leadership to make swift decisions coupled with clear communication. I work with a company that spans multiple countries and time zones and is overhauling its decision-making framework. They adopted EOS two years ago and are leaning into its teachings to borrow from its robust accountability playbook. We hypothesize that we can adapt its principles to enhance our decision-making systems by mapping decision jurisdictions across roles, functions, and departments, identifying overlap, and refining our processes to ensure decisions are smooth, timely, and communicated where overlap is unavoidable. We are also implementing a decision-making framework by distilling 3 types of decisions with corresponding approaches: Decisions about problems, decisions about communicating information, and decisions for vetting ideas. We are still in the early stages of this experiment, but I thought I would share our approach if there are folks here using EOS and facing the challenges highlighted in Will's post.
Philip Brittan
1mo
I believe this is fundamentally about risk aversion. We naturally go through cycles of fear and greed. When fear is elevated(as it is now) people drag their feet on making decisions, and it takes just one naysayer to derail any project. When we’re in a ‘greed’ part of the cycle, the fear of missing out outweighs the fear of making a mistake, and people find a way to say yes, regardless of circumstances.
Mark Montgomery
1mo
I'll take a stab at it Will as I'm in a pretty good position to do so. Uncertainty is near an all-time high in modern economy. In EAI, on one hand orgs are waiting to see what transpires with SCOTUS ruling on copyright, the presidential election, and where Congress lands on AI regs -- particularly training on data owned by others, and privacy (good chance of a landmark SCOTUS decision early in the AI era, but will take a while). One the other hand, many orgs have already decided they don't want to risk any external data exchange with consumer LLM chatbots, yet they see enormous opportunity in AI, so are aggressively pursing other options. The easiest decision in EAI is often the worst: "start small, experiment, and learn". Requires little internal funding at the business unit level ($2 million research project is not a big deal for most F500s), but rarely delivers an ROI precisely because it's so timid. Often promoted by consulting firms -- it's self-serving advice. Meanwhile, competitors were going bold and leaving most others in the dust. There is a large group waiting for wide availability of next gen systems like our KOS, but they are facing market failure in tech & VC, so we are collectively forced to look at alts.
JT Benton
1mo
Will, I wonder if some of this hand-wringing might be a function of a poorly-understood target, or misalignment around what the actual target is. This makes decisions which should be binary much more difficult to answer. Should we invest in marketing? Spin up a new product or feature? Grow the team? Partner with another company? The answer to all of these questions has to be informed by their strategic relationship to the outcome the business is pursuing. I think sometimes that thesis is known in only some parts of the org. In other cases, it's anecdotally understood but not in a codified way. Thanks as always for thoughtful commentary!
Roger Lang
1mo
Great observation. Unsettled dust is in the air, and for so many reasons. The AI age springing forward in hitherto inknown ways is among them, but also concerning wars, a critical election year, all on top of a post-pandemic work ethos lingering… I have not seen anything like it in 40 years of entrepreneurship. Remedy: it is better to make decisions and adjust or recalibrate than remain indecisive. Do not wait for the dist to settle to make decisions… get used to these times, as more change and upheaval are coming.
Joshua Churlik
1mo
This type of cycle occurs regularly in mature sectors and I believe is less related to hybrid or zoom work. I’ve found a few key drivers to be sector macro uncertainty, cost efficiency focus and a lack of strategic urgency. When these are present an overall slowdown in decision making or lack there of can be expected.
Daniel Gaugler
1mo
In addition to the bureaucracy, it seems that decision-makers often delay in hopes of gaining new or more information to make a decision certain. However, they rarely gain any new insights by waiting. An important question decision-makers need to ask is: What additional information do I need to make this decision?
Danny Mitchell
1mo
Yes. Indentify the decision maker (singluar) in each problem, empower them to make the decision, execute, move on. Mistakes will be made but interia kills businesses.
John DiCola
1mo
Perhaps it’s a fear of accountability. We had a 10 year run where the economy grew and everything seemed to work. Then we had Covid and nobody had any accountability. So now, the economy is slowing, companies aren’t hiring at the same pace and people are afraid to make decisions. It seems safer to hide behind bureaucracy.
Partner at Next Frontier Capital
1moWill, read your post on decision making - Definitely have noticed the same phenomenon. People are increasingly unable to make decisions. Here is one connection which I thought you might find interesting: Decision Making = Free Will. And free will is a "muscle" we can train. Making decisions on little, non-consequential things allows us to train our brains for big consequential decisions. Specifically in the context of bearing the burden of the consequences. For example if you navigate using maps your path is predetermined. If you get taken the wrong way it's not your fault. But if you navigate on your own intuition you bear complete responsibility if you go the wrong way! I think specifically it's the "bearing the consequences" that lacks - and as a result decisions are hard.