The average business owner makes hundreds of decisions every week.  These range from trivial to business-altering.  But every business owner also knows those decisions floating around out there that need to be made, but which don’t rise to the “needs to happen today” level. 

The reality is that Delayed Decisions create significant risk, cost you opportunity, and cause you continuous headaches.  Business owners need to get out of the habit of focusing on IMMEDIATE NEEDS and instead focus on FUTURE GROWTH.  Obviously, many decisions you make will still fall into the immediate needs category, but if you fail to consider future growth and ignore those decisions, you’ll find yourself only spinning your wheels in today’s mess and never failing to move forward to tomorrow’s growth. 

Causes of Delayed Decision Making 

So, why do business owners often find themselves in a constant Delayed Decision-Making status? 

  • Decision-making fatigue due to overload: First, decisions get delayed because you are simply making too many decisions.  Everything comes across your desk. Every minor decision, every detail of operations.  And even if it’s not literally every decision, you know you still have your hand in too many decision jars in your own business.  And the tendency is to delay decisions that can be delayed because you need to focus on what needs to get done today.   
  • Task and information overload:  Similar to the above, it’s not just decisions that come across your desk, but tasks, proposals, budget issues, etc.  You simply have too much to do, and even finding the time to identify the most consequential decisions can be hard to do. 
  • Analysis Paralysis: Your business is doing well because you care about quality.  And you bring that same approach to your decision making.  But the reality is that the quest for a perfect decision causes more problems than it solves in the end. 
  • Lack of delegation: You need your employees to take some of these decisions off your plate, but you are holding on to these decisions.  There may be good reasons for that.  Maybe they aren’t prepared or capable, or you don’t have a process in place for that.  But holding on to all the decisions results in the decision-making fatigue and overload mentioned above. 

Costs

  • Risk accumulation: Delayed decisions also mean that your business continues to build risk. A delayed IT decision, for example, doesn’t just mean the same old headaches. It means risk building on risk as the possibility of a cyber incident or network failure grows proportionally over time. An unsupported server doesn’t become risky overnight. Every week it goes without updates, every new vulnerability discovered, and every delayed replacement quietly increases the odds that a routine day turns into an expensive outage 
  • Inhibits growth / opportunity costs: Most significantly, delaying important decisions means delaying your business growth.  Staying in the constant cycle of “this week” decisions means ignoring the opportunities you have now for next year. 
  • Financial cost: Delaying decisions can increase cost when you have to make them down the road anyway.  Prices, hiring costs, or operational costs may increase the longer you delay. 
  • Morale: Sometimes these delayed decisions mean lowered morale for your team.  Maybe it’s clear that a process, vendor, or service needs to be adjusted, and your folks get increasingly frustrated as they deal with the hiccups, downtime, customer complaints, or other symptoms of a problem inside your business. 

Solutions 

Some simple solutions can help repair this problem and move your business forward. 

Delegate and Define ownership: Ideally, most of the decisions you make should be strategic decisions about the direction and growth of your business.  That’s not always reality, but you want to identify those decisions which you can get off your plate.  Hire and train good people to make those decisions, and make clear processes for folks to follow.   

Set deadlines: Any issue that requires a decision also needs a deadline.  Don’t let it hang out there over your head.  Put it in your physical or digital planner or task management software.  When the date comes, make a decision. 

Scheduled strategic thinking: This is straightforward but requires discipline.  Set aside blocks of time where you are only focused on the growth of your business, not on the nitty-gritty details of day-to-day operations. 

Good enough is really good enough: In decision-making, the perfect is the enemy of the good.  A decent decision made in prompt fashion is far better than a perfect decision made far too late. This covers most aspects of our life, and business is no different.  

Reduce information overload:  Focus your decisions on the most relevant measurables, KPIs, or details.  Obviously, large-scale decisions require more time and information than smaller ones.  You don’t need to make decisions on minimal information, but make sure you aren’t drowning in information so that you aren’t focused on the most important items. 

Create risk visibility: The most insidious effect of delayed decision is the accumulated risk.  Risk never stays the same.  It tends to snowball, even if that isn’t visible in your operations until disaster happens. There are many Risk Assessment strategies you can use, but you should regularly assess, update, and manage risk. 

Conclusion 

Every business owner will have decisions that can wait until tomorrow. The danger comes when tomorrow becomes next month, then next quarter, and eventually next year. 

The truth is that delaying a decision doesn’t eliminate the consequences.  It simply shifts them into the future, often with added cost, added risk, and fewer options. Whether it’s hiring a key employee, replacing outdated technology, improving a process, or addressing cybersecurity concerns, the price of waiting is usually much higher than the price of acting. 

Successful businesses aren’t built by making perfect decisions. They’re built by making thoughtful decisions at the right time, learning from the results, and continuing to move forward. If you want your business to grow instead of simply survive, make time for tomorrow’s decisions today.