Ask a business what it spent last quarter on materials, contract labour, freight or electricity, and the figure arrives quickly. Ask what it spent waiting for its own decisions, and there is no answer: not an estimate, not a range. The question does not match anything the accounting system records.
That is not an oversight. Cost systems track work that carries a cost code or produces an invoice. A shipping leg is visible because the freight company bills for it. The wait for a signature is invisible because a signature generates no bill. Deciding has no code, so the time it consumes does not appear in budgets, schedules or variance reports, however much of the calendar it takes.
This matters because a cost system that cannot see waiting blames its effects on whatever it can see, which is usually the team doing the work. Pressure then falls on the part of the business that was ready to proceed, and none on the part that was holding it up. This article explains where decision time hides, why delay is often a price paid for assurance rather than a lapse, how to keep a simple priced log of pending decisions, and how to match decision authority to the cost of waiting.
Where decision time hides
Waiting does not disappear. It is absorbed in three places, each of which distorts a different measure.
Inside the activity that was blocked
When work cannot start until an approval arrives, the wait is usually folded into that work’s actual duration. The task appears to overrun, the overrun is explained, and the explanation is filed. Worse, the next estimate for similar work is based on the last actual, so it quietly includes the waiting. Over time, estimates absorb the business’s typical approval delays and look conservative without anyone knowing why.
Inside overheads
When waiting extends a project or a job, it adds weeks of supervision, site costs, equipment hire or management time. That is often the only way waiting becomes visible as money, and it arrives with the wrong label. The business sees overheads rising and looks for savings in its support functions, while the queue that caused the rise was never recorded.
In queues between meetings
Decisions often arrive when the deciding meeting happens, not when they are needed. If a decision group meets monthly, a decision that becomes ready just after a meeting waits a month. On average, items wait half the interval between meetings, a full interval if the paperwork misses a deadline, and two or more if an item is deferred. Deferral is the sharpest case: an item that is neither approved nor rejected often leaves the agenda with no owner and no review date, while the clock keeps running.
Why progress reports blame the wrong people
A team waiting for a decision completes nothing, so on a progress report it looks slow. If the people are reassigned to other work while they wait, the project’s costs may even look under control. The report reads as “this team is behind but frugal”, when the truth is “this team is idle because a decision is late”. Without a record of the decision and its timing, the two situations look identical.
Delay is often a purchase of assurance
Not all decision time is wasteful. Much of it buys something: scrutiny, consultation, checking, alignment. Every governance setting is a purchase of confidence paid for in days. How often the decision group meets. How many items it can take. What value requires the owner’s or board’s approval. How many signatures a change needs. Each setting buys scrutiny, and each costs calendar time multiplied by whatever the business forgoes each day it waits.
The useful question is therefore not how to stop waiting. It is what the business is buying with the wait, whether that is worth the price, and who decided to pay it.
Preparation lag and deliberation lag
Decision time has two distinct parts:
- Preparation lag: from the date a question became answerable, meaning all the information needed existed, to the date it reached the person who can decide. This belongs to whoever prepares the decision.
- Deliberation lag: from the date the decider received it to the date they decided. This belongs to the decider and the decision process.
Keep them separate. Combining them hides who can shorten the wait.
A decision log with a price
A simple tool closes the gap: a decision log listing every decision that work is waiting on, with a daily cost. It can be a spreadsheet:
| Field | What to record |
|---|---|
| Decision | The question, stated clearly |
| Decider | One named person who could decide it today |
| Answerable date | When all the information needed existed |
| Submitted date | When it reached the decider |
| Decided date | When it was decided |
| Daily cost | What the business forgoes for each day it waits |
| Outcome | Approved, rejected, or deferred with a review date |
If no single decider can be named, that is the first finding.
Estimating the daily cost
The daily cost does not need to be precise. Three common bases are:
- Idle capacity: the cost of people or equipment held waiting.
- Margin forgone: the contribution lost each day the business runs at its current rate rather than the improved rate the decision would allow.
- Growing exposure: risks or costs that increase with time, such as customer patience, penalty clauses or deteriorating stock.
Choose one basis per decision and keep it consistent. Ask your accountant to sense-check the rates, so the numbers are trusted.
Rules that make the log useful
- Delegate when waiting costs more than the decision is worth. If the accumulated cost of waiting regularly exceeds the value at stake in a type of decision, that type of decision should be delegated to a lower level.
- Watch for overloaded deciders. If someone’s deliberation lag regularly exceeds one meeting cycle, they have too many decisions, and that is a design problem, not a delivery problem.
- Every deferral needs a review date. A deferral without one should be treated as rejected at the next review, so items do not linger unseen.
- Compare the cost of the queue with the cost of delegation. Delegation carries risk and needs some checking. Where the queue costs more than the checking would, delegate.
Designing faster decisions
The log shows where time goes. Common improvements include:
- Delegated limits that match the value and risk of decisions, and that are actually used.
- Decide-by dates set when a question is raised, based on when the answer is needed.
- Shorter, more frequent decision slots, such as a weekly twenty-minute decision meeting instead of a monthly agenda.
- Better decision papers: short, with the options, a recommendation and the cost of waiting stated on the first page.
- Default decisions: agreeing in advance that if no objection is raised by a date, a proposal proceeds.
- Clear outcomes: every meeting item ends approved, rejected or deferred with a review date.
The article on meetings that end in decisions covers running decision meetings well.
Decisions that belong to others
Not every pending decision sits inside the business. Customers approve drawings and samples, councils and certifiers approve applications, suppliers confirm substitutions and lenders approve finance. These external decisions often cause the longest waits, and they are easy to leave off the log because nobody inside the business can make them.
Include them anyway. Record the date the request was complete, the date it was submitted and the expected decision date, and price the wait in the same way. Seeing the cost helps decide how much effort to put into chasing, whether to prepare a fallback, and whether to change the sequence of work so that external decisions are requested earlier. It also helps when discussing timing with customers: a customer who sees that approval delays are costing their own project weeks is often willing to speed up their review.
Introducing the log without blame
A decision log can feel like an accusation, particularly to the owner or senior managers whose names appear in the decider column. Introduce it as a tool for the business, not a scorecard for individuals. Start with a short trial, report totals rather than league tables, and focus the first review on process changes such as delegated limits and meeting rhythms rather than on who was slow. When deciders see that the log protects their time by keeping routine decisions away from them, support usually follows.
A worked example
This is an illustration. A small manufacturer starts a decision log after noticing that several improvement projects seem permanently stuck. In one quarter, the log captures three decisions.
New tooling set, $28,000. The production manager had everything needed for a decision on 3 March, submitted a proposal on 10 March and received approval at the monthly meeting on 27 March. Preparation lag was seven days and deliberation lag seventeen days, a total of 24 days. Without the new tooling, the line ran at a slower rate, forgoing about $900 a day of contribution. Waiting cost about $21,600, close to the price of the tooling.
Customer specification change. A request to accept a minor specification change waited twelve days for a decision, during which three staff were partly idle. Estimated cost: about $600 a day, or $7,200.
Packaging supplier. A decision to switch to a cheaper packaging supplier was deferred twice without a review date. For 45 days the business continued paying about $150 a day more than necessary, about $6,750.
Together, about $35,550 of waiting cost in one quarter, none of it visible in the accounts as such.
The owner makes four changes. The production manager’s approval limit rises to $30,000 for budgeted tooling and maintenance purchases. A twenty-minute weekly decision slot replaces waiting for the monthly meeting. Every deferral must carry a review date. The owner and the accountant review the decision log monthly. Over the next quarter, average time from answerable to decided falls from about three weeks to about five days.
How this applies to a small Australian business
In small businesses, most decisions wait for the owner. That is often sensible for large or unusual decisions, and very expensive for routine ones. Practical steps:
- Keep a simple decision log for a month and estimate daily costs.
- Separate preparation lag from deliberation lag.
- Set delegated limits that match value and risk, and put them in writing.
- Create a short, frequent decision slot rather than letting items wait for a monthly meeting.
- Give every deferral a review date.
- Ask for the cost of waiting on the first page of any decision request.
- Review the log with your accountant or adviser periodically.
The articles on delegating without losing control and time to value cover related practices.
Signals worth watching
- Work falling behind across several teams at once with no technical cause.
- Overheads rising while direct costs hold steady.
- A growing number of deferred items.
- Fewer items decided on their first appearance at a meeting.
- Decisions recorded as owned by a committee.
- Requests framed as clarifications to avoid the formal approval queue.
Common mistakes
- Blaming delivery teams for delays caused by waiting.
- Treating all decision time as waste, rather than as a purchase of assurance to be judged.
- Combining preparation and deliberation lag.
- Deferring without a review date.
- Setting approval limits once and never revisiting them.
- Keeping all decisions with the owner regardless of value.
Frequently asked questions
Is this just about making decisions faster? No. Some decisions deserve more time. The aim is to see what waiting costs, so the business can decide deliberately where scrutiny is worth the price and where it is not.
How accurate do daily costs need to be? Rough is fine. A range is better than nothing, and the main value is in comparing decisions and spotting the expensive queues.
What if the owner is the bottleneck? That is common and understandable. Start by delegating routine decisions with clear limits and sampling checks, and keep the owner’s time for decisions where their judgement adds most.
How long should we run the log before acting on it? A month is often enough to reveal the main queues and the most expensive types of decision. Make one or two changes, such as a new delegated limit or a weekly decision slot, then compare the next month’s results.
Should decision time appear in project plans? Yes, for important approvals. Showing approval steps as activities with owners and durations makes them visible and manageable.
Questions to ask
- Which decisions is our work waiting on right now, and when did each become answerable?
- What share of our last few projects was spent waiting rather than working?
- Which approval steps take longer than the information they review stays useful?
- What does a day of waiting cost on our most important pending decision?
- How many deferred items have no review date?
- If routine decisions moved one level down, what risk would we take on, and what waiting cost would we save?
Bringing it together
A business pays for waiting on its decisions every day, at a rate nobody set and in a form no report shows. Keep a decision log, separate preparation from deliberation, put a rough daily price on each pending decision and give every deferral a review date. Then set delegated limits, meeting rhythms and decision papers so that scrutiny is bought deliberately, where it is worth its price. The choice is not whether to pay for decision time. It is whether to see the bill.
Source: KEVOS notes. Examples and figures in this article are illustrations.
