How the Pursuit of Agreement Kills Execution Speed
Clear decision rights beat unanimous agreement every time.
We spent three weeks deciding on a new CRM.
Three weeks. For software.
Every person on the leadership team had opinions. We had meetings to discuss options, evaluate vendors, and debate features. We built comparison spreadsheets. We scheduled demos. We went back and forth on pricing.
By the time we finally made a decision, we'd burned dozens of hours of leadership time and delayed a sales process improvement by almost a month. And the kicker? The decision we made after three weeks was the same one our head of sales had recommended on day one.
I realized we'd fallen into a trap. We were treating every decision as if it required unanimous agreement. We were so focused on making sure everyone felt heard that we'd forgotten the goal was to move forward, not to reach consensus.
I call this the Consensus Trap—the pattern in which leadership teams pursue agreement from everyone rather than clarity about who actually decides. It's one of the most common dysfunctions I see when coaching founder-CEOs, and it's deadly because it feels like good leadership while slowly strangling execution speed.
Recognizing the Consensus Trap in Your Business
The symptoms are easy to spot. Decisions that should take a day take weeks. Simple choices become extended debates. People relitigate decisions that were supposedly already made. The team spends more time discussing than doing.
There's a particular pattern in meetings: someone raises a decision, everyone shares their perspective, and then... nothing. The discussion loops. More perspectives get shared. The meeting ends without a clear outcome, and the topic reappears on next week's agenda.
When decisions do get made, they're often compromises that no one is excited about. The team averaged everyone's input and landed on something that doesn't fully satisfy anyone. These mediocre decisions then get revisited when they inevitably underperform.
The founder often becomes the tiebreaker by default. Even though the team spent hours debating, they eventually looked to the CEO to make the call. All that discussion time was wasted because the decision rights were never clear in the first place.
The Root Causes
The first cause is that consensus feels democratic and fair. Excluding people from decisions feels hierarchical or authoritarian. It's easier to include everyone than to tell someone their input isn't needed on this particular issue.
The second cause is fear of making the wrong call. If everyone agrees, the risk feels distributed. If one person decides and it's wrong, they're exposed. Consensus provides cover that individual decision-making doesn't.
The third cause is a lack of clarity about decision rights. Teams default to consensus because they haven't explicitly defined who decides what. Without a framework, every decision becomes a group discussion by default.
Finally, many leaders confuse input with decision-making. They think that if they have strong opinions, they should have a vote. But having an opinion doesn't mean you need to be the one who decides. Input and decision-making are different roles.
The Real Price of the Consensus Trap
Speed is the most obvious cost. In competitive markets, the company that decides and iterates faster usually wins. While your leadership team is debating options, your competitors are testing and learning. The three weeks you spent choosing a CRM are three weeks your sales team operated with suboptimal tools.
But there's a deeper cost: decision quality. Counter-intuitively, consensus often produces worse decisions, not better ones. Compromises that satisfy everyone typically optimize for nothing. Bold, clear decisions—even imperfect ones—usually outperform safe choices that everyone can live with.
There's also a confidence cost. When teams chase consensus, they're implicitly saying they don't trust any individual to make good calls. Over time, this erodes your leaders' confidence. They stop taking initiative because they've learned that every decision requires group approval.
The opportunity cost is enormous. Every hour your leadership team spends debating decisions is an hour they're not spending on execution, strategy, or developing their teams. Decisions are a means to an end, not the end itself.
What Actually Works
High-performing teams operate with clear decision rights—explicit definitions of who has what role in each type of decision. The framework I use has five distinct rights.
Input rights mean you can share information that might be relevant. You submit your perspective through a conversation, an email, a form—but you're not in the room when options get debated.
Collaboration rights mean you're at the table. You help identify options, define criteria, and work through trade-offs. You're part of the discussion.
Make rights mean you decide. Ideally, this is one person. They consider all input and collaboration, then make the call. They're accountable for the outcome.
Approval rights mean you can block a decision before execution—but you can't change it. This exists when broader concerns need to be checked before moving forward. If you have approval rights, the decision-maker needs to understand your criteria upfront.
Inform rights mean you get told what was decided. You're not part of the process, but you need to know the outcome.
What I find consistently is that people crowd the center. Everyone wants collaboration rights. Good facilitation moves people to the ends—either input on the front end or informed on the back end. This dramatically speeds up decisions.
The other key is calibrating confidence levels. Not every decision needs 95% certainty. For most business decisions, 80% confidence is the right threshold. Below that, you're making poor decisions with insufficient information. Above that, you're taking too long and slowing your velocity. Save the exhaustive analysis for irreversible, high-stakes decisions.
Do You Have This Problem?
Run a quick test: think about the last significant decision your leadership team made. Before the discussion started, was there a clear owner—one person with the right to make decisions? Or did the team assume it would be decided by consensus?
Another test: time your decisions. How long does it take from when a decision is identified to when it's made? If routine decisions are taking weeks instead of days, you have a decision-making problem.
Ask your team: "For the ten most common decisions we make, who has the right to make for each one?" If you get different answers from different people—or long pauses—decision rights aren't clear.
Where to Start
Begin by mapping your most common decisions. List the ten to twenty decisions your leadership team makes repeatedly—hiring approvals, budget allocations, vendor selections, product priorities, whatever recurs.
For each one, define the decision rights: who has input, who collaborates, who makes, who approves (if anyone), and who gets informed. Write it down. Share it with the team.
When a new decision comes up, start by asking: "Who owns this decision?" Get clear on decision rights before discussing options. The five minutes you spend clarifying rights will save hours of circular debate.
For ongoing decisions, implement a rule: the person who makes the right decision should aim for 80% confidence, then decide. If they need more time or information to get to 80%, they ask for it specifically. But they don't chase the last 20% unless the decision is truly irreversible.
Questions for You and Your Team
Before moving on, take a few minutes to reflect on these questions. The goal isn't to have perfect answers—it's to surface whether this pattern might be affecting your team.
For your next three major decisions, can you name the single person who will make each one—before any discussion happens? If decision rights are clear, this should be instant. If it's not, you're defaulting to consensus.
When was the last time a decision was made by one person over the objection of others—and everyone still committed to executing it? This is the sign of a mature team with clear decision rights.
How long do your routine decisions take, from identification to resolution? How much of that time is actual analysis versus waiting for consensus to emerge? The answer reveals how much the Consensus Trap is costing you.
Take the Next Step
If you want to see where your leadership team stands on decision-making and five other critical dimensions, take the Leadership Team Assessment. It's a free 15-minute diagnostic that scores your team across the factors that determine whether you'll scale smoothly or hit the same walls repeatedly.
Take the Leadership Team Assessment
If you'd like help implementing a decision rights framework for your leadership team, I offer a free 60-minute consultation.
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About the Author
Bruce Eckfeldt is a strategic business coach and exit planning advisor who helps founder-CEOs of growth-stage companies scale systematically and exit successfully. A former Inc. 500 CEO who built and sold his own company, he brings real-world operational experience to strategic planning and leadership development. He's a certified ScalingUp and 3HAG/Metronomics coach, Certified Exit Planning Advisor (CEPA), an Inc. Magazine contributor, and host of the "From Angel to Exit" podcast. Bruce works with growth companies in complex industries, guiding leadership teams through growth challenges and exit preparation. Reach him at bruce@eckfeldt.com with any questions or if you want more information or to book a call with him.
