A CEO wakes up in the middle of the night. An urgent message blinking: a competitor has just slashed their prices by over 20%.
Almost every CEO’s first instinct will be to ask their team for a plethora of new insights. This includes updated sales forecasts, marketing burn rates, and margin projections. And then he’ll compare his numbers with the expected numbers of that competitor. Seems the standard protocol, doesn’t it?
However, the insights he requested won’t just be handed to them at a moment’s notice. Multiple stakeholders will add their input to it, and by the time the report is ready and delivered to their desk, the market will have already reacted. The damage will have been done; the opportunity long gone.
This is a regular occurrence for most businesses. Not the competitor slashing their prices part, but the one about the delay in insights getting to the CEOs’ desks. The problem in such cases isn’t of ignorance; it’s inertia.
Decision Velocity Now Defines Leadership
For decades now, leadership has become synonymous with experience, instincts, and hierarchy. It didn’t matter if you were the first one out the door, as long as the objective was done deliberatively. However, that way of doing things is long gone, and persisting with it can bring more harm than good for organizations.
Markets now evolve in minutes, competitors can react and pivot in a matter of hours, and social sentiments are all subject to events of a single afternoon. In such a state, every minute spent idly will cost an organization crucial ground.
Hence, renewed emphasis must be placed on decision velocity, i.e., turning insights into informed actions. It is by far the only attribute that separates an agile organization from traditionally bureaucratic ones.
The Cost Of Slow Decisions
In an organization where insights travel slowly, mostly due to the sheer number of stakeholders involved, the following occurrences become the norm:
- Reports are outdated before they’re read. Weekly summaries reflect yesterday’s world.
- Teams act without alignment. One department adjusts strategy while another continues on autopilot.
- Opportunities fade in the lag. By the time the data is analyzed, the competitive advantage is gone.
The Future Belongs To The Fast & The Focused
The future of leadership belongs to those who understand just how important speed is in the context of insights. Without speed, insights are irrelevant; just as without insights, speed is downright reckless.
Decision velocity must now be treated as just another buzzword. It must become a competitive necessity that determines just how an organization chooses to develop its decision-making mechanisms.
Moreover, CEOs must no longer be required to choose between accuracy and agility. The technology that now exists can deliver both. And the ones that best adapt to this reality will be the ones best placed to ride the wave of change.