Monday, September 14, 2026
Most organizations are better at making decisions than making decisions happen.
The leadership team meets. The issue is debated. Data is reviewed. Someone eventually says: “Agreed. Let’s move forward.”
Everyone leaves believing progress has been made.
But twenty-four hours later, ownership is still unclear. Forty-eight hours later, resources have not moved. A week later, another meeting is scheduled to clarify the previous meeting.
Meanwhile, a late shipment, quality issue, customer escalation or missing approval pulls the organization back into firefighting.
This is one of the least visible forms of execution failure.
Organizations lose performance not only through bad decisions, but also because good decisions take too long to become action, recurring problems consume execution capacity, and routine decisions wait unnecessarily for permission.
Three problems reinforce one another: decision-to-action delay, recurring firefighting and decision latency.
1. The First 48 Hours After a Decision Matter
There is nothing magical about exactly 48 hours. It is a management discipline.
An important decision should create visible movement almost immediately.
Someone owns it. The first action is defined. Resources begin moving. Affected people know what changed. A follow-up mechanism exists.
McKinsey research involving more than 1,200 respondents found that only 37% said their organizations consistently made decisions that were both high quality and high velocity. Organizations described as strong decision makers also tended to execute decisions faster.
McKinsey & Company — Decision Making in the Age of Urgency
A decision is not complete when leadership agrees.
A decision is complete when the organization begins behaving differently because of it.
The Difference Between a Decision and an Intention
Consider two teams that both decide to qualify a second supplier.
One says: “Procurement should look at alternatives.”
The other assigns one accountable owner, names suppliers to screen, releases technical requirements, schedules the first contact and establishes a review cadence.
Both made the same decision. Only one created an execution mechanism.
Bain describes this as part of decision effectiveness: quality, speed, yield and effort. A technically good decision creates little value if the organization does not translate it effectively into action.
Bain & Company — Measuring Decision Effectiveness
A Practical 48-Hour Execution Test
After an important decision, six things should become visible quickly:
One owner. Not a committee. Not “Operations.” One accountable person.
A first observable action. A supplier is contacted, a project begins, a trial is scheduled, a customer meeting is booked.
A deadline. “Soon” is not a date.
Resources. If nobody’s priorities change, the initiative may be an aspiration rather than a plan.
Communication. People affected by the decision know what changed and what is expected.
Follow-through. Leadership asks: Did what we decided actually happen?
2. Stop Managing Exceptions—Fix What Keeps Creating Them
Strategic work also loses momentum because organizations spend too much time fighting the same fires.
A shipment is late. Production changes the schedule. Quality has another deviation. Inventory does not match the system. A purchase order needs an emergency approval.
The immediate problem gets solved. Everyone moves on. Then it happens again.
Harvard Business Review’s classic Stop Fighting Fires describes how chronic firefighting can consume organizational resources while teams apply quick fixes instead of completing deeper problem-solving work.
Harvard Business Review — Stop Fighting Fires
Which problems are we solving this week that we also solved last month?
If the same event repeatedly requires management intervention, it is no longer just an exception. It is information about the system.
The American Society for Quality defines root cause analysis as a structured approach to identify underlying causes so they can be addressed through effective corrective action and process improvement.
American Society for Quality — Root Cause Analysis
Containment: How do we protect today’s customer?
Correction: How do we fix today’s problem?
Root-cause elimination: Why was the system capable of producing this problem repeatedly?
Create Two Clocks for Every Significant Fire
Clock One: Recovery. How quickly can we protect the customer, employee or operation?
Clock Two: Recurrence. What must we learn and change so this does not happen again?
The Lean Enterprise Institute distinguishes reactive troubleshooting from structured problem solving designed to eliminate root causes and prevent recurrence.
Lean Enterprise Institute — Four Types of Problems
3. Decision Latency Is an Invisible Operating Cost
An engineer waits for approval. Procurement waits for specifications. Operations waits for engineering. A manager waits for a vice president. The vice president waits for the next leadership meeting.
Email moves. Presentations move. Meetings happen.
But the work does not.
This is decision latency: the time between when a decision should reasonably be made and when the organization actually makes it.
Inventory waits. Customers wait. Projects wait. Revenue waits. Savings wait. People wait.
Sometimes the market does not.
McKinsey’s research suggests that fast decisions and high-quality decisions are not opposites. Organizations making decisions quickly were reported to be twice as likely to make high-quality decisions as slow decision makers.
McKinsey & Company — Good Decisions Don’t Have to Be Slow Ones
Push Decisions to the Right Level
One of the fastest ways to improve execution is to decide explicitly who has the right to decide what.
McKinsey’s work on decision rights and the DARE framework emphasizes clarifying deciders, advisers, recommenders and executors so issues do not circulate endlessly through the organization.
McKinsey & Company — If We’re So Busy, Why Isn’t Anything Getting Done?
Do not ask first: “Who should be involved?”
Ask: “Who actually has the authority to decide?”
Participation and approval authority are not the same thing.
Establish Decision Thresholds Before the Decision Arrives
Organizations can remove enormous latency by defining authority in advance.
A plant manager can approve spending below a threshold. Procurement can change suppliers within defined commercial and quality limits. Customer service can resolve claims below an agreed value. Engineering can make low-risk technical changes without executive approval.
Exceptions outside those parameters escalate.
This changes leadership from a permanent approval mechanism into the designer of the decision system.
The Three Problems Form One Execution System
A decision is made. If nothing happens quickly, momentum disappears.
Execution begins. Recurring fires consume the people who were supposed to execute it.
New decisions are required. They move slowly through unclear authority and unnecessary approvals.
The initiative stalls.
Execution often fails not because people are unwilling to work, but because the operating environment makes action unnecessarily difficult.
Decision → Action → Problem Solving → Next Decision → Result
That path is an operating system.
Leadership owns its architecture.
A Monday Execution Audit
Take one important initiative and ask:
Decision-to-action: What happened in the first 48 hours?
Firefighting: Which recurring issues are consuming the people responsible for execution?
Decision latency: What is waiting because nobody is sure who can decide?
Measure Waiting, Not Only Working
Consider measuring age of open decisions, time from decision to first action, repeat corrective actions, number of chronic exceptions, time awaiting approvals and percentage of actions completed by committed date.
Invisible friction becomes manageable once it becomes visible.
The Leadership Trap: Becoming the Best Firefighter
Executives are often rewarded for intervention.
The customer calls. The executive steps in. A supplier fails. The executive escalates. A decision stalls. The executive decides.
Repeated executive rescue can unintentionally teach the organization:
Wait long enough and leadership will solve it for you.
Strong leaders eventually shift from solving every problem to building an organization that solves problems; from making every decision to creating clear decision rights; and from accelerating every emergency to eliminating the systems that keep producing emergencies.
Our Perspective
At EGBS — ENLOSA: Global Business Solutions, we see execution as the organization’s ability to convert decisions into coordinated action repeatedly and predictably.
That requires three disciplines:
Move after the decision.
Eliminate recurrence.
Reduce decision latency.
So this Monday, ask three questions:
What did we decide that has not yet moved?
What problem are we solving again?
What is waiting today because nobody is certain who can decide?
Organizations do not move at the speed of their strategy.
They move at the speed at which decisions become action.
Make the decision. Move within 48 hours. Solve recurring problems at the source. Push authority to the right level. Then follow through.
ENLOSA: Global Business Solutions
Strategy. Leadership. Execution.
enlosa@enlosa.com | +1 (877) 246-1109
References
- McKinsey & Company — Decision Making in the Age of Urgency. Source
- McKinsey & Company — Good Decisions Don’t Have to Be Slow Ones. Source
- McKinsey & Company — If We’re So Busy, Why Isn’t Anything Getting Done? Source
- Bain & Company — Measuring Decision Effectiveness. Source
- Harvard Business Review — Stop Fighting Fires. Source
- American Society for Quality — Root Cause Analysis. Source
- Lean Enterprise Institute — Four Types of Problems. Source
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