Decision Capability in the Top Team

What it is about

When a leadership team cannot decide, the whole organization feels it: in delays, workarounds and resignation. This advisory mandate focuses on exactly this point, the decision capability of the top team. Not as a team-building measure, but as work on structures, roles and decision processes.

The approach is diagnostic: we start with the question of what exactly is blocking, before we intervene.

Typical starting situation

The strategy meeting ends without a decision again. Everyone knows it. Nobody says it. Or: two board members pursue strategic directions that contradict each other, and the team works on both at the same time. Or: decision rights are distributed in a way that everyone hedges and nobody decides.

Specifically, we address:

• Unclear or overlapping decision rights and responsibilities
• Conflict avoidance or destructive conflict in the leadership team
• No shared problem definition: everyone is solving a different problem
• Strategic divergence that cascades down the organization

How we work

1. One-on-one conversations (weeks 1–2): Confidential conversations with each team member. Not an evaluation, but pattern recognition: where do perspectives diverge?
2. Diagnosis (weeks 2–4): Where is the actual blockage: structure, people or process? Often it is a combination, and the diagnosis makes it negotiable.
3. Intervention (months 1–3): Facilitated clarification formats and new agreements: decision architecture, role clarity, escalation logic.
4. Anchoring (months 3–6): Support with decreasing intensity. Review sessions, sparring for individual leaders where needed.

Scope of the mandate

• Diagnosis (2–4 weeks): individual interviews, team observation, pattern analysis
• Intervention (1–3 months): facilitated clarification formats, new decision architecture, role agreements
• Anchoring (3–6 months): review sessions, sparring, decreasing intensity

Typical team size: 4–8 members of the leadership team.

Outcome

• A new decision architecture: who decides what, within which frame, with which escalation path
• Clear role agreements in the leadership team
• A shared problem definition that everyone supports
• A review rhythm that allows corrections before patterns return

Typical formats

Decision Clarity Workshop (1–2 days)

A compact intervention to sharpen the decision logic in the leadership team. On site, 6–12 people. Outcome: a shared problem definition, prioritized decision questions, clear responsibilities.

Decision Sprint (3–6 weeks)

Hypothesis-based work on a concrete strategic question. Weekly sessions (60–90 minutes), core team of 4–8 people. Outcome: tested hypotheses, a robust decision brief.