AUA: Why Does Every Decision Take Forever?
About this episode:
Original Air Date: August 17 2026Most organizations run on two default modes of deciding: build consensus until everyone's exhausted, or debate until the boss makes the call. Both feel normal and both quietly stall the work, so how do you introduce something better without triggering resistance?
In this mini episode, Rodney and Sam trade their favorite on-ramps. Rodney starts small: be the person who asks "wait, have we actually decided?" Sam makes the case for a bigger palette of decision types, from the advice process to IDM-lite. And both land hard on the power of the proposal, even a scrappy single paragraph beats another meeting of casting about, and bringing two counter-proposals takes your ego out of the game entirely.
Mentioned in this episode:
“decision episode”: BNW Ep. 139
IDM (“Integrated Decision Making”): BNW Ep. 43
“RACI episode”: AWWTR Ep. 10
The Ready’s Proposal Template
In this episode:
Rodney Evans
Sam Spurlin
Listen now:
Episode transcript:
Rodney Evans:
Hey y'all. Welcome back to At Work with The Ready. I'm Rodney Evans and that guy is my friend Sam Spurlin.
Sam Spurlin:
Hello everyone and hello especially to you, Rodney.
Rodney Evans:
Every other week we tackle one tough thought-provoking listener question and give you a few ideas that we hope are helpful. So let's dive in. Sam, what do you have for us this week?
Sam Spurlin:
This week's question goes a little something like this. We are currently working on having more explicit decision making processes, which move away from an assumption of either consensus or "you're the boss, so we'll all debate and then you decide." How do you introduce and practice new decision making processes? What are the pitfalls and bear traps to avoid while doing it?
Rodney Evans:
Okay. I'm going to focus specifically on how you introduce them because my experience, and Sam I'm curious if yours is different, is there'll be a lot of frustration around how decisions get made and a lot of complaining around consensus building or kicking the can on decisions. But then there's also often a lot of resistance to a more structured process and to bringing proposals and processing them or having really clear decision rights that don't require input or consensus building. So I'm going to go at that angle of it more than the practice of it because I think actually getting over the awkwardness of how to decide how we're going to decide is a really big hurdle. I'm going to assume that this listener is in the worst case scenario, which they probably aren't based on how they wrote the question. They're probably more progressive than I'm giving their org credit for.
But for the people out there who really need to red pill their company, I would first just try being really explicit in the meeting about whether a decision has been made. So before we even get into "What's a new way of doing this?" or "Are we satisfied with how we're doing this?" Even just being the person who takes the moment to go, "Okay, so have we decided? Is this book closed, finito? And who and how will that decision be communicated?" is a very easy and mostly non-controversial on-ramp to discussing how decisions get made. So I generally start with something as sort of easy breezy as that if there is worry about resistance generally.
Sam Spurlin:
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I think where my brain goes on this question is really around the like, do you have a large kind of palette of decision-making approaches or even the way that you are thinking about decisions? In my experience, a lot of times organizations kind of just have this one thing they call decisions or decision-making and it's like they all kind of just fall into this bucket. But really there's a whole kind of spectrum of types of decisions ranging from the incredibly innocuous to the incredibly important and maybe very amorphous sorts of things like, did we even make a decision here? And to the extent that your org your team has a more robust palette, a bigger toolbox of ways to think about this, I think it is helpful. So I'm talking about things like, are you familiar with the idea of an advice process versus just making a unilateral decision based on decision rights?
IDM we talk about all the time, but what about kind of like an IDM-lite where maybe we're not going to go through the whole process, but we are going to kind of separate out clarifying questions from reactions. So just starting to expand your world around those ideas I think can be an interesting first step into this world of doing it a little bit differently.
Rodney Evans:
Yeah, I really like that. I noticed that you didn't mention RACIs, Sam, and I'm shooketh that was not one of line items.
Sam Spurlin:
It's almost as if we've done an entire episode about why RACIs are not the answer.
Rodney Evans:
Trashing RACIs. Yeah. Speaking of first steps, one of my other thoughts on this question is I agree with everything you said and I think you and I both have some pretty varsity moves around decision making. And the power of the proposal is not to be underestimated.
Sam Spurlin:
Yeah, totally.
Rodney Evans:
Even if you're really just getting first reps and you're like a baby fawn just trying to stand up for the first time on decision making, just the idea of you as an individual in a group that has sort of loosely decided they're going to try to do this in a different way saying on Tuesday I am going to bring a proposal for a decision and then doing that. That is so counter to how most groups just cast about hoping that an answer lands on the table that everybody can sign up for that I really feel like even if you just bring something like that and you keep it really scrappy, even if it's like we obviously like a full proposal template that talks about risks and assumptions and other scenarios considered and is like a fully fleshed out one or two pager.
But even if you just bring a single paragraph that's like, "Hey, here's what I'm proposing. I would love your questions on this. And then I would love your feedback on this and then that's it. " Even just that motion is very disruptive to a lot of groups.
Sam Spurlin:
100% agree. And I think an even easier way to get to that point is do whatever you normally do for a first sort of decision-making meeting with the chaos of talking about what we could do and people are talking about various options and whatever that normally is, but have the takeaway from that be, "Okay, I'm going to take this conversation and I'm going to make a proposal and I'm going to bring it back to our next meeting next week or the next time we get together," because that's normally the missing part. I love that. What we'll do instead is usually we'll reconvene in two weeks and do the same thing basically and hope to God a decision falls out at the end.
Rodney Evans:
Swirl the drain again.
Sam Spurlin:
Almost never really happens. So do the normal thing, bring a proposal to the next one based on that first one. And I think that is already a much better process.
Rodney Evans:
Oh, that's so smart. That's so smart. And also then it takes the sting and the awkwardness out of even what I said of being like, "I brought a proposal because you dummies can never decide." Even just sort of doing the two step of I'd love to do the swirly freewheeling thing we normally do. And then I will sharpen that into something to bring back and then do that as a proposal is a very nice on ramp to this thing. I feel like I've talked a lot about ramps today. That might've been before we started recording anyway.
Sam Spurlin:
I think so.
Rodney Evans:
If you guys feel like you're on a highway, I don't know why. It's just where my brain is.
Sam Spurlin:
It's all good.
Rodney Evans:
Awesome. Anything else, Sam?
Sam Spurlin:
I had a thought and then you said ramp, which made me think of onions. Different type of ramp.
Rodney Evans:
Ooh, I love ramps. Those kinds.
Sam Spurlin:
I do have one more thought. One more though that's not onion related.
Rodney Evans:
Onion related.
Sam Spurlin:
Which is, so I think sometimes the hesitance to bring a proposal is that you have your ego potentially wrapped up and "I'm making a call" or "I'm making a proposal." One way I think you could short circuit that, which is still better than the default, is bring two proposals, bring two counter proposals, one that is one very clear and one that is another way. And at least then we're still talking about specific things and comparing them to each other and not just kind of existing in this decision-making conversation swirl, which is usually how it goes.
Rodney Evans:
I love that. All right.
Sam Spurlin:
All right. That is it for this mini. If you've got a question of your own, hit us up at podcast[at]theready[dot]com.
Rodney Evans:
And we will see you back next week for a full episode of At Work with The Ready. Thank you so much for being a listener.