Raconteur’s recent research found that, 94% of the time, a decision in a business will involve at least six people. A fifth of the time, more than 16 people will have an input. Do those numbers surprise you?
No. What you find in a lot of businesses is a lack of distributed accountability. If you take the RACI model [a responsibility assignment matrix used in project management], there are people who are responsible, accountable, consulted and informed. But firms often leave out the ‘accountable’ element. They create several management layers, meaning that someone else somewhere up the chain becomes accountable for what you’re responsible for delivering. That’s where decision-making breaks down, because each person ends up covering their own back.
An unbelievable amount of decision paralysis happens in business because no one wants accountability. The problem is that, if someone is three positions removed from a decision but is accountable for its outcome, they will want to know all the details. Even if they do know them all, they probably don’t understand them. So it becomes a massive job to make them feel comfortable enough to sign off on the decision.