Welcome

Welcome back to ValueKey Labs, in this issue we at a look at decision latency: what it costs when a Project Board says “not yet”, and four ways I’ve seen to keep things moving.

The Hidden Cost of “Let’s Get a Bit More Information”

I’ve sat in this Project Board meeting more times than I can count. Forty minutes in, the room is still circling the same decision. The options have been presented. The project team has made its recommendation. Everyone’s read the paper (well, most people have). It’s a big call, and it’s weighing heavily on the group.

And yet… no decision.

You can see what’s coming from a mile off. Someone raises a fair question about a small gap, a few heads nod, and the room settles on the safest sentence in governance:

“Let’s get a bit more information before we decide.”

Another options paper. Another expert view. Another month until the next meeting.

It feels like good governance. Your being careful.

Nobody’s ever been removed from a Project Board for asking for more information. Make a call and get it wrong, and your name is on it. Defer it, and you can hope the answer becomes self-evident. It rarely does.

Putting off making a decision has a name: decision latency. It’s the time between a decision being ready to make and it actually being made. It seems harmless, but the cost of decision latency leaks out quietly through burn rate, slipped milestones and benefits that arrive later than planned.

A wrong decision has a cost. But an unmade decision has a compounding cost.

Most wrong calls can be fixed. It’s awkward, there’s some rework, maybe an uncomfortable conversation. But the project changes course and the damage is known.

Deferral is more pervasive. It doesn’t sit still; it spreads. Dependent work slips, then the work after that. People sit idle, get pulled onto other things, or build workarounds someone has to unpick later. Risks that could have been dealt with get bigger. Benefits and funding windows drift further away, one week at a time.

Quick maths: a ten-person team costing $8,000 a day between them, waiting three weeks for the next Project Board, is $120,000 gone before anyone has picked an option. None of that shows up in the options paper.

So What Helps?

Four things I’ve seen work well.

1. Put a price on waiting. Show the cost of delay right next to the options. “We need more analysis” becomes “Three more weeks of analysis will cost about $120k in delivery time. Is what we’ll learn worth that?”
2. Ask the one question that matters. Before anyone commissions another paper, ask: “What do we expect to learn that would change our decision?” I’ve watched that question turn a four-week deferral into a ten-minute decision.
3. Set decision thresholds early. When nobody’s quite sure where the boundaries are, PMs escalate everything. Fair enough; it keeps them safe. Agreeing up front the decision thresholds for what the PM can approve on cost, schedule and scope, in line with the organisation’s delegations and what requires escalation.
4. Agree the date and the default. Sometimes waiting is the right call. When it is, agree two things before leaving the room: when the decision will be made, and what happens if nothing new turns up. “Unless the vendor review raises something new, we go with Option B on the 14th.” The board stays in control and the work keeps moving.

A word to fellow PMs: we aren’t always innocent here. A paper with no clear recommendation, or no explicit “decision requested” line, practically invites a deferral. Make the ask unmissable.

None of this is about rushing decisions or making braver guesses. It’s about making the cost of waiting as visible as the cost of getting it wrong. Then “not yet” becomes a choice, not a reflex.

If any of this sounds familiar, hit reply and tell me about the longest-stalled decision you’ve seen, and what finally unstuck it. Always happy to talk through where decisions are getting stuck.

Until next time, happy projecting.

Guy Thorpe, aka The Project Guy

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