How Decisions Actually Get Made

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Part 2: When to move fast and when to slow down

You get a message late in the day. A decision is needed before tomorrow morning. A partner organisation is waiting. Delays could cost the deal. You have partial information. The risks are not fully clear.

Your instinct is to pause. The expectation is to move.

This is where many organisations get decision-making wrong. They treat speed as a virtue in itself. Decisive gets confused with competent. Fast gets confused with effective. But speed only helps when it fits the kind of decision in front of you.

The real question is not, “How quickly did we decide?” It is, “Did we move at the right pace for the decision we were actually facing?”

The science

Research into real-world decision-making paints a more nuanced picture. Gary Klein’s work with firefighters, military leaders, and emergency responders showed that fast decisions are not usually about rushing. They are often about pattern recognition. Experienced decision-makers move quickly because they recognise what is happening and can mentally test a response before acting.

That is very different from haste.

In familiar conditions, expertise can make speed a strength. In unfamiliar or ambiguous conditions, speed becomes much less reliable. The point is not that intuition is always superior. It is that fast judgement works best when the environment is stable and the decision-maker has deep experience in that setting.

Gerd Gigerenzer’s work points in a similar direction. Simple rules can outperform complex analysis, but only when they fit the structure of the environment. A heuristic is not valuable because it is simple. It is valuable because it is well matched to the problem.

John Sweller’s work on cognitive load also matters here. When cognitive load is high, complex reasoning becomes harder to sustain. That means speed may sometimes be a practical necessity. But necessity is not the same as quality.

Moving quickly in familiar territory can be efficient. Moving quickly in ambiguity is often a route to avoidable error.

Key findings
A few distinctions matter more than speed alone.

1. Expertise changes the value of speed.
   Fast decisions are more reliable when they are grounded in experience and pattern recognition.
2. Ambiguity calls for pause.
   When the problem is unclear or the options involve competing priorities, slowing down creates space for better judgement.
3. Not all decisions deserve the same pace.
   Some decisions are reversible. Others are not. Treating them the same creates avoidable risk.
4. Organisations often reward speed.
   In many workplaces, acting quickly is read as leadership, even when it is not the most thoughtful response.

What this means in practice
If the goal is better decisions, speed becomes something to manage rather than maximise. Move fast when the situation is familiar, the cost of reversal is low, and expertise is high. Slow down when the stakes are high, the information is incomplete, or the issue is contested.

That sounds obvious, but many workplaces make it difficult in practice. If the culture rewards quick answers, penalises hesitation, or equates decisiveness with certainty, then slowing down can feel risky even when it is the wiser move.

That is where decision-making often breaks down. Not because people do not know they should pause, but because the system makes pausing feel like weakness.

A quote to reflect on
A confident decision is not always the right one. – My own reflections
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A question to reflect on
Think about a recent decision you made quickly. Was it fast because the situation called for it, or because slowing down felt uncomfortable?
 
Further readings

• Klein, G. (1998). Sources of power: How people make decisions. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
• Gigerenzer, G. (2007). Gut feelings: The intelligence of intuition. London: Penguin.
• Kahneman, D. (2011). Thinking, fast and slow. New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

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