Leadership traits | Is 'decision paralysis' impacting your role?

Making important decisions is a key part of a business leader’s role, whether it’s a decision to freeze hiring, or to partner with a new supplier, leaders have to make the call.

But new data has revealed that a huge number of CEOs and other C-suite executives have experienced ‘decision paralysis’ in the past. This term is defined as an inability to make or decide on a solution or course of action usually caused by over-analysing or overthinking a situation.

Research shared by AI firm Peak as part of its Decision Intelligence Report 2021 found that two-thirds of executives had suffered from this issue. It surveyed 500 participants sitting in both C-Suite executive and founding roles in businesses across the UK, ranging from SMEs to companies turning over more than £25 million annually.

It discovered that 64% of survey respondents admitted that decision making is now more complicated than ever before, with around half sharing that this process takes too long within their company and that they had recently delayed making a big business decision until it was too late.