The Data Myth: Why Decisions Really Slow Down
April 2026: Simon Rurka, Founder & CEO
Executive Summary
Imperfect data and the need for more analysis are symptoms and provide a convenient excuse to delay decisions. Unclear ownership, fear of mistakes, conflicting priorities and unwillingness to make trade-offs play a more important role.
Digging deeper revealed that insufficient data was at the root of no more than 20% of decision delays.
Decisions Slowing and Competition Closing
At the Director level in large organizations, decisions often stall while teams wait for better data. Yet data gaps explain only a small percentage of delays. Many decision slowdowns stem from unproductive behavioral norms, with fear often at the center.
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A large consumer technology company was beginning to lose market share as competitors launched new products that closed the gap in performance and cost-effectiveness. Engineering groups were capable, and the sales and marketing organization was both motivated and engaged.
Yet the organization’s ability to respond to the ever-increasing threat seemed to be falling short. While revenue and margins were hitting KPIs, the leadership team began to express concerns about the company’s eroding position in-market.
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During a leadership team offsite, slow decision-making was identified as a primary barrier to innovation and in-market performance.
The Insufficient Data Myth
In diagnosing why decisions were slow, a gap emerged between leadership perception and reality. Mid-to-senior leaders repeatedly cited imperfect data as the reason decisions weren't made on time. But digging deeper revealed something different.
Insufficient data was at the root of no more than 20% of decision delays. That finding emerged from a structured assessment of how decisions were being made, and where they were stalling
Data had become a convenient explanation. It shifted accountability away from leadership behavior and onto an external factor.
Five Factors Explained the Rest
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Fear of being wrong. Making a visible mistake carried career risk. Delaying a decision rarely did. ​Leaders therefore punted on decisions.
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Unclear ownership of the decision or execution, resulting in unhealthy tension at all levels of the organization.
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Unwillingness to accept trade-offs. Decision-makers sought best of both worlds outcomes that satisfied everyone. When trade-offs became unavoidable, decisions stalled.
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Ineffective Decision Styles. Leaders vacillated between top-down decision-making and consensus. Neither are optimal.
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Conflicting interests across the organization. Disagree and commit was encouraged. The reality was outward agreement followed by side conversations and intentionally slowed action.
Once the real drivers of delay were clear, we began to address them systematically. The first step was to acknowledge certain behaviors that had become unhealthy norms. Particularly fear of being wrong and trade-off avoidance.
From Narrative to Truth
In the old way of working, leaders would send analysts and middle-management off to rerun the numbers any time the data didn't meet their expectations. The dance wasted time and energy, at a time when workload was already high. For teams caught up in it, the natural response was to take the path of least resistance. Rerun the analysis more than a couple of times, and the people will start to provide leaders with what they think they'll want to hear. Truth dies quickly.
Starting with the VP team, an effort was made to recalibrate conversations around truth rather than narrative. Leadership started to role-model candid conversation about the actual effects of a decision, and encouraged others to do the same.
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Unclear ownership and conflicting interests had created unhealthy tension at every level. To address lack of clarity on ownership, the organization adopted a Recommender, Decider, Actor (RDA) model. One role develops the proposal. One makes the call. One executes. This is similar in nature to the well-known RACI approach, but simpler for large numbers of individuals to remember (and stick to).
Meeting audiences were reduced to a level appropriate to gain diverse inputs, while also enabling robust debate. Once a decision was made, fast execution became the expectation. Foot-dragging and side conversations were explicitly off the table.
The Human Reality of Implementation
Implementation was not without stumbles. Mid-level leaders remained uncomfortable until they saw senior leadership genuinely adopt new behavioral patterns. Prior to that, they hedged. They brought decisions forward with more caveats than conclusions, and waited to see which way the wind blew before committing. Once they saw senior leaders hold the line, accepting trade-offs, resisting the pull to send teams back for another pass, the behavior started to shift.
Velocity as a Competitive Advantage
Within four months, time-to-decision at VP level had been cut in half. A positive second-order effect was that meeting preparation workload dropped significantly. With fewer reviews and less of the dog and pony show, teams across marketing, sales, product, and engineering could redirect time toward solving real problems.
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Structured check-ins at four and nine months confirmed that the behavioral changes were holding, and identified where reinforcement was still needed. By changing habits around how decisions were made and how actions flow from those decisions, organizational speed, time-to-market and competitiveness were all improved. Time, energy and efficient use of productive effort were the mechanisms that benefitted from the change, without the need for a structural transformation or re-organization effort.
About The Simon Impact
Simon Rurka is the Founder and CEO of The Simon Impact, a consulting firm that helps large organizations eliminate bureaucracy and accelerate execution. He spent 20 years at Intel, where he led a $9B Global P&L, took multiple businesses from decline to growth, and built a reputation for questioning assumptions to avoid stagnation. He also holds an MA in Economics from the University of Cambridge, and is a Deloitte alum.
