Why Decisions Go Bad: 7 Common Failures That Kill Organisational Progress

Most people don’t wake up and say, “Today I shall tank a project with poorly framed assumptions and an over-optimistic Gantt chart.” And yet, we see it happen time and time again.

According to McKinsey & Company, only 20% of executives believe their organisations excel at decision-making, even though many spend over one-third of their working hours trying. Meanwhile, the Project Management Institute reports that poor decisions contribute to over one-third of project failures globally.

If you lead a team with too many meetings and not enough movement, consider this your field guide to avoiding committee doom.

The Seven Deadly Sins of Decision-Making

1. Lack of Clarity: No One is Quite Sure What We’re Deciding

Before you can make a good decision, you need to know what you’re actually deciding. Vague goals and unspoken assumptions create a foggy decision space where everyone’s busy, but no one’s quite sure what they’re solving.

Example: A regional NFP board approved a “digital capability uplift” project with enthusiasm. Months later, one team was building an intranet, another was pricing cloud subscriptions, and a third thought they’d been asked to improve cybersecurity.

What to do instead:

• Frame the decision upfront: “What exactly are we deciding today, and what does success look like?”
• Ask contributors to explain the decision in their own words
• Revisit framing regularly in longer projects

2. The Illusion of Alignment: Everyone Nods, But No One Agrees

In meetings, people nod. They smile politely. No one dissents. Yet days later, three different teams implement three different interpretations of what was “agreed”.

What to do instead:

• At the end of every key meeting, ask: “What have we actually decided? Who owns what?”
• Clarify both the what and the why
• Watch for artificial harmony. If everyone’s agreeing too eagerly, ask: “What’s a sensible objection we haven’t considered?”

3. No Clear Owner = No Clear Outcome

Gartner reports that 65% of decisions are revisited due to unclear ownership. When decisions are made “by consensus”, it often translates to “no one is quite sure who said yes.”

What to do instead:

• Assign a clear decision owner at the outset
• Be explicit: who recommends, who provides input, who agrees, who decides?
• Pair every decision with an action plan

4. Bias in Disguise: How Thinking Shortcuts Sabotage Quality

We all use cognitive shortcuts that help us make sense of the world. Handy in everyday life, less so when navigating complex organisational decisions.
Common culprits include confirmation bias (seeking evidence that proves we’re right), anchoring (clinging to the first idea), sunk cost fallacy (throwing good time after bad), and overconfidence.

Daniel Kahneman showed that intuition often overrides logic, especially under pressure. That warm, confident glow in the meeting room? Possibly just your bias having a good day.

What to do instead:

• Encourage diverse views. Actively invite dissent
• Use a premortem: “Imagine this decision fails. What went wrong?”
• Build in reflection time

5. Framing Failure: Solving the Wrong Problem

Sometimes the problem isn’t the decision. It’s the question you started with.
Procter & Gamble famously reframed “How do we sell more detergent?” into “How do we help busy parents simplify laundry?” The result? Product innovations people actually wanted.

What to do instead:

• Begin with a problem framing discussion: What’s the real problem? Whose perspective are we missing?
• Use Who, What, When, How, Why to unpack the issue before generating options
• Ask whether you’re treating symptoms or addressing root causes

6. Moving Too Slowly or Too Fast

Some teams suffer from analysis paralysis. Others move so quickly they forget to check if they’re deciding on the right thing.
McKinsey found that companies in the top quartile for both decision speed and quality are twice as likely to outperform their competitors.

What to do instead:

• Match decision pace to context: fast for low-risk decisions, slower for complex ones
• Don’t over-engineer things that can be reversed
• For high-stakes calls, aim for a good-enough decision to test, not a perfect one to delay

7. Not Reviewing or Learning from Decisions

Many decisions are treated as finish lines. PMI reports that fewer than 30% of organisations systematically review their major decisions. The rest rely on “experience”, also known as making the same mistake twice with more enthusiasm.

What to do instead:

• Build in review checkpoints 60 to 90 days post-decision
• Ask: What worked? What didn’t? What would we change next time?
• Use simple tools like decision logs or short retrospectives

Recognising the Warning Signs

You don’t need a diagnostic app to know when decision-making is off the rails. Just look for:

• “We’ve already decided that”, but no one’s quite sure what was decided
• Decisions made but mysteriously unimplemented
• Teams working at cross-purposes
• Endless rehashing of the same issue with no new information

These aren’t just annoyances. They’re signals that clarity, alignment, or ownership is missing. The good news? All three are fixable.

Building Better Decision Habits

Even great organisations make bad decisions. What separates the successful from the seriously exhausted is their ability to reflect, learn, and adjust.
Spot the common traps and build simple habits that support ownership, clarity, and follow-through. You’ll waste less time, make better calls, and stop attending meetings about meetings.