Archive note: Originally published on LinkedIn on January 10, 2026. This article is preserved here as part of the evolution of our thinking on decision coherence, organizational design, and the idea that organizations function fundamentally as systems for making and sustaining decisions.
There is a quiet misunderstanding at the heart of modern organizations. So embedded that we rarely name it.
We talk endlessly about people. About culture. About engagement. About mindset, leadership styles, motivation.
And yet, organizations continue to stall, exhaust themselves, and collapse under pressure. Not because people don’t care. But because the system keeps asking people to live with decisions it cannot carry.
Decisions are not a byproduct. They are the work.
Strip an organization of its narratives and you’re left with something brutally simple.
An organization exists to make decisions under constraints.
What to pursue and what to abandon. What matters now and what must wait. Where authority sits. Who absorbs risk when things go wrong.
Everything else-structure, culture, processes, incentives-emerges after those decisions.
Herbert Simon argued decades ago that decision-making is not one managerial activity among many, but the central function of administration. James March later showed that organizations rarely decide through pure rationality, but through patterns shaped by time, politics, rules, and survival. Karl Weick went further: meaning does not precede action-sense is made after decisions unfold, not before.
In other words, organizations are not collections of people who decide. They are decision systems that people must survive.
When decisions fail, people adapt
Decisions don’t fail loudly. They fail quietly. They lose ownership. They are revisited under pressure. They are softened “just in case.” They dissolve into alignment, discussion, or permanent postponement.
And when that happens, people don’t resist. They adapt. They slow down. They protect themselves with procedures. They improvise locally and disengage globally. They wait for clarity that never comes.
Research consistently shows that ambiguity in decision authority and shifting priorities increase stress, reduce discretionary effort, and erode trust-not because people lack motivation, but because uncertainty becomes chronic (Edmondson, 2018; DeRue & Ashford, 2010).
When organizations describe this as a “culture problem,” they misdiagnose a decision failure as a human one.
Managers are told their job is to “work with people”
This is where the confusion becomes dangerous. Managers are trained to coach, motivate, support, and empathize. All valuable skills-until they become a substitute for decision responsibility. When decisions are unstable, managers become emotional shock absorbers. They explain contradictions they didn’t create. They motivate people around priorities that may change tomorrow. They protect teams from decisions that leadership won’t defend.
This is not leadership. It is compensation for a broken system.
People do not need more motivation to operate in ambiguity. They need decisions that survive contact with reality.
Decision failure cascades everywhere
When decision systems weaken, everything else becomes expensive. Engagement initiatives spike and fade. Performance fluctuates unpredictably. Innovation accelerates briefly, then collapses into chaos. Change programs multiply without ever finishing.
None of this happens because people are incapable.
It happens because the organization has lost decision coherence-the ability to make, transmit, and protect decisions over time. In stable environments, this can be hidden. In complex ones, it cannot.
Complexity exposes decision weakness ruthlessly.
A different question for leaders
Instead of asking:
Why aren’t people committed? Why is there resistance? Why doesn’t change stick?
Ask something far less comfortable:
Which decisions in our organization consistently fail under pressure?
Where do priorities collapse? Where does ownership blur? Where does neutrality replace leadership?
Where decisions cannot survive, people cannot commit. And no amount of cultural work will fix that.
They need decision systems that can carry the weight they impose.
References
Simon, H. A. (1947). Administrative Behavior. New York: Macmillan.
March, J. G. (1994). A Primer on Decision Making: How Decisions Happen. New York: Free Press.
Weick, K. E. (1995). Sensemaking in Organizations. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Edmondson, A. (2018). The Fearless Organization. Wiley.
DeRue, D. S., & Ashford, S. J. (2010). “Who will lead and who will follow? A social process of leadership identity construction.” Academy of Management Review, 35(4), 627–647.
Cyert, R. M., & March, J. G. (1963). A Behavioral Theory of the Firm. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.