The Biggest Cost Is the Decision You Haven't Made Yet

I was listening to Steven Bartlett's Diary of a CEO podcast with James Clear recently, and Bartlett said something that stopped me mid-task:

"The biggest cost is the time you waste making a decision."

Not the wrong decision. Not the risky decision. The unmade decision.

I've been thinking about it ever since, because it crystallises something I've watched destroy organisations for twenty years, and something that's become catastrophically more expensive in the age of AI.

The Illusion of Safety

There's a comforting lie we tell ourselves about delayed decisions: we're being careful. We're gathering more information. We're reducing risk. We're being responsible.

It feels like safety. It's actually the opposite.

Every day you don't decide is a day you don't act. Every day you don't act is a day your competitors do. Every week spent "evaluating options" is a week someone else spent building, shipping, learning.

The information you're waiting for? It probably won't change your decision. The alignment you're seeking? It's often just consensus-seeking disguised as diligence. The risk you're avoiding? It's dwarfed by the risk of standing still.

Clear has spent years studying how habits compound. Small actions, repeated consistently, create extraordinary results over time. The flip side is equally true: small inactions, repeated consistently, create extraordinary decay. Bartlett's insight cuts to the chase: the delay itself is the cost.

Every unmade decision is a compounding inaction.

The New Speed of Consequence

Here's what's changed: the penalty for slow decisions has exploded.

Five years ago, if you took six months to decide on a technology direction, your competitors might gain a quarter on you. Painful but survivable. The pace of change was measured in years.

Now? Six months is a lifetime.

AI capabilities are doubling on timescales measured in months, not years. A startup can go from idea to shipped product in weeks. Markets that seemed stable are being disrupted between board meetings.

The world is moving at AI speed. Your decision-making is still moving at committee speed.

That gap is where companies go to die.

I've watched organisations spend longer debating whether to adopt AI than it would have taken to build, test, and learn from an actual implementation. By the time they decided to "move forward with a pilot," their competitors had shipped production systems and captured market share.

The decision eventually made was the same decision they would have made six months earlier. The only difference was six months of lost time and lost learning.

The Decision Debt

Think of unmade decisions as a form of debt.

Every decision you delay accrues interest. The longer you wait, the more you owe. And unlike financial debt, decision debt compounds in ways that aren't always visible until it's too late.

Opportunity cost: While you're deciding, opportunities pass. Markets shift. Competitors move. The opportunity you're evaluating today may not exist tomorrow.

Learning cost: Decisions lead to action. Action leads to feedback. Feedback leads to learning. Every day you don't decide is a day you don't learn. Your competitors who decided faster are now six months of learning ahead of you.

Team cost: Your best people want to build, not wait. Every week spent in decision limbo is a week they're frustrated, disengaged, looking elsewhere. The talent cost of slow decisions is rarely measured but always real.

Momentum cost: Organisations in motion tend to stay in motion. Organisations stuck in decision paralysis tend to stay stuck. The longer you wait, the harder it becomes to move.

Compounding cost: All of these costs compound. Six months of delayed learning means worse decisions in month seven. Lost talent means slower execution when you finally do decide. Missed opportunities mean fewer resources for future bets.

The debt comes due eventually. Usually all at once. Usually when you can least afford it.

The Myth of the Perfect Decision

Here's the uncomfortable truth: most decisions don't matter as much as you think.

Not in the sense that they're unimportant, but in the sense that the difference between option A and option B is usually smaller than the difference between "deciding now" and "deciding later."

Jeff Bezos talks about one-way doors versus two-way doors. One-way doors are irreversible decisions. Once you walk through, you can't come back. These deserve careful deliberation.

But most decisions are two-way doors. You can walk through, see what's on the other side, and walk back if you don't like it. For these decisions, speed matters more than perfection.

The problem is that organisations treat every decision like a one-way door. Every choice gets the same heavyweight process: meetings, stakeholder alignment, risk assessment, executive approval. By the time you've walked through the door, the opportunity on the other side has evaporated.

Speed of iteration beats quality of initial decision. The organisation that makes ten decisions, learns from the results, and adjusts will outperform the organisation that makes one "perfect" decision in the same timeframe.

What Slow Decisions Actually Signal

When an organisation can't make decisions quickly, it's usually a symptom of deeper dysfunction:

Unclear ownership. No one is empowered to decide, so everyone has to be consulted. Decisions require consensus because no individual has authority.

Fear of accountability. If the decision is collective, no one is responsible when it fails. Slow decisions are often a form of risk distribution: spread the blame widely enough and it lands on no one.

Misaligned incentives. The people making decisions aren't the ones who bear the cost of delay. Executives who spend months deliberating don't feel the daily frustration of teams waiting for direction.

Information hoarding. Decisions get escalated because information isn't shared. The people closest to the problem can't decide because they don't have context that's locked in someone else's head.

Process over outcome. The organisation values following the process more than achieving results. A "properly made" decision that's too late is considered better than a fast decision that worked.

Slow decisions aren't a decision-making problem. They're an organisational health problem. The decision speed is just the symptom.

The Compounding Advantage of Speed

Let me flip this around. What happens when you decide fast?

You act. Action creates feedback. Feedback creates learning. Learning improves the next decision. The cycle accelerates.

An organisation that can make and execute decisions in days operates on a different timescale than one that takes months. Over a year, the fast organisation has run dozens of experiments while the slow one is still on its second.

This isn't just about efficiency. It's about capability development.

Every fast decision is practice at making fast decisions. Every rapid iteration builds the muscle memory of action. The organisation becomes better at deciding because it decides more often.

Meanwhile, the slow organisation gets better at deliberating. It builds more sophisticated analysis capabilities. It creates more thorough review processes. It becomes world-class at preparation and terrible at action.

Which organisation would you bet on?

The AI Acceleration

AI makes all of this more extreme.

Fast organisations can now move even faster. AI handles implementation, so the gap between decision and deployed solution has collapsed. A team that can decide in a day can ship in a week.

Slow organisations face an even wider gap. Their competitors aren't just deciding faster, they're executing faster too. The penalty for deliberation has multiplied.

I've watched this play out in real time. Two organisations facing similar challenges. One spent three months building an "AI strategy." The other spent three months building AI capabilities. Guess which one is ahead?

The strategy organisation has a beautiful document. The building organisation has shipped products, learned what works, and iterated. They're not guessing about AI's potential, they're measuring it.

The irony is that the strategy organisation thinks they're being more thorough. They believe their deliberation will lead to better outcomes. They're wrong. The learning from three months of building is worth more than any amount of theorising.

How to Decide Faster

If you want to accelerate decision-making, here's what actually works:

Push decisions down.

The people closest to the problem should make the decision. Not because they're always right, but because they have the most relevant information and they bear the most direct consequences. Every level of escalation adds delay without adding proportional value.

Set decision deadlines.

Not project deadlines, decision deadlines. "We will decide by Friday" changes the dynamic completely. Without a deadline, decisions expand to fill available time. With a deadline, you find out how much deliberation was actually necessary (usually less than you thought).

Make reversibility explicit.

Before any decision process, ask: "Is this a one-way door or a two-way door?" If it's reversible, treat it like it's reversible. Fast decision, learn from results, adjust if needed.

Accept good enough.

You're not looking for the optimal decision. You're looking for a decision that's good enough to move forward with. The difference between 80% right and 95% right is rarely worth the time to achieve it.

Create default actions.

"If we don't decide by X, we do Y." This eliminates decision paralysis by making inaction an active choice. Suddenly, not deciding has a concrete consequence.

Measure decision latency.

Track how long decisions take. From first raised to final decision. Make it visible. What gets measured gets managed. Most organisations have no idea how slow they actually are.

Reward speed, not just outcomes.

If you only reward successful outcomes, people will delay decisions to avoid potential failures. Reward the speed of decision-making independently from the outcome. Celebrate fast failures as much as fast successes.

The Decision I'm Making Right Now

Here's the thing: I could have sat on this article.

I could have "thought about it more." Found more research to cite. Workshopped the argument. Sought feedback from smart people. Waited until it felt "ready."

Instead, I'm shipping it. Today. Because the insight hit me, and the best time to capture it is now, while the energy is fresh and the connection is clear.

Will it be perfect? No. Will some argument be underdeveloped? Probably. Will I think of better examples tomorrow? Almost certainly.

But it will exist. It will be out in the world. I'll learn from how people respond. And I'll write the next thing, incorporating what I learn.

That's worth more than a "perfect" article that never ships.

The Real Question

Here's what I want you to take away:

What decision are you not making right now?

What choice is sitting in committee, waiting for more information, seeking broader alignment?

What would happen if you just decided today, and dealt with the consequences?

The biggest cost isn't the wrong decision. It's the right decision made too late. It's the opportunity that evaporated while you were evaluating. It's the learning you never got because you never acted.

The world is moving at AI speed. Your competitors are moving at AI speed. The market is moving at AI speed.

How long can you afford to move at committee speed?