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Our Perspective

What this means for leaders navigating growth, change or transformation in their organisation.

The Real Bottleneck

Most teams don’t slow because of process; they slow because of ambiguity. When decision rights are fuzzy, well‑intentioned people improvise, decks get rewritten, and the brand lurches with every leadership rethink. Empowerment without ownership looks fast from afar, yet it creates friction and rework as choices are revisited in every forum. We often see the fastest organisations are those with the crispest boundaries on who decides what, with everyone else clear on how to contribute.

The underlying point is simple: speed and consistency aren’t opposites. They come from the same place—clarity about who has the call, when it will be made, and what evidence is enough.

Define Ownership

For brand‑shaping choices—who you serve, what you promise, and what you prioritise—appoint a single accountable owner, with defined advisers and a decision date. That owner listens to the right voices, weighs the trade‑offs, and protects the decision unless new facts require a reset. This isn’t centralised decree; it’s clear responsibility with transparent input rules.

McKinsey reports that only 20 percent of organisations rate themselves strong at decision making, and when decisions move faster they tend to be higher quality and deliver better returns. The implication for leadership: design the governance once, so decisions don’t get remade endlessly in the corridors.

An Operating Rhythm

Turn clarity into cadence with a simple, visible rhythm:

• Publish a decision map that lists each critical decision, the owner, advisers, those to be informed, and the minimum evidence required.
• Use a short decision brief linking the choice to strategy and the customer promise; include criteria and a default outcome if the deadline arrives without agreement.
• Run a time‑boxed forum to hear input, test options, decide, and log the rationale in a change record so people understand the “why” and don’t reopen settled ground.

This keeps conversations focused on facts and intent, not politics or volume.

Lead Indicators

MIT CISR finds organisations that empower cross‑functional teams with explicit decision rights outperform command‑and‑control peers on profit margin, revenue growth, and new‑offering revenues. Track early signals that your system is working:

• Cycle time from brief to decision by category.
• Reversals within 60 days, with a one‑line “why we reversed” note for learning.
• Message rework requests from sales and product, so you see where confusion creeps in.

From our experience this normally shows up as fewer back‑channel approvals, less re‑interpretation of the strategy, and steadier narratives in the market.

Leadership Posture

The job of leadership isn’t to make every call; it’s to make it unambiguous who does. When ownership is explicit and the rhythm is respected, you convert pressure into pace: choices get made once, the brand stops zigzagging, and the organisation holds its line when the market jolts next.

Sources:

• Decision making in the age of urgency — McKinsey
• Decision Rights for Organizational Acceleration — MIT CISR

1. Aligning Vision and Results to Prevent Brand Drift
2. Positioning Decisions: Who Holds the Decision Rights?
3. Aligning Brand and Strategy to Overcome Misalignment