Waiting is a decision

A board that defers a call for two quarters has not kept its options open. It has chosen the option that decays slowest, and it has paid for that option with two quarters.

The language is where this hides. “We need more information” and “we are not ready to decide” describe the same six months from the outside, but only one of them can be challenged in the room. The first invites a question about what information, arriving when, and what it would change. The second invites nothing, which is usually why it is the one that gets said.

Deferral is often right. The information is genuinely coming, the cost of waiting is small, the position is not deteriorating while you wait. Those are conditions, and conditions can be written into the minutes and checked at the next meeting. What corrodes a board is deferral that never states its conditions, because nothing unstated can be reviewed, and so it renews itself quietly every quarter until the decision is made by circumstance.

The practical test is short enough to run in the meeting itself. If we take this decision in six months rather than now, what will be true then that is not true today, and what will it have cost to find out? A board that can answer both halves is waiting deliberately, which is a legitimate and sometimes excellent thing to do. A board that can answer neither has already decided. It has decided to let the calendar decide.

Decisions of this kind are almost always recorded as no decision at all. That is the part worth changing first, and it costs nothing.