Our leadership team is highly collaborative, but we have fallen into the trap of needing consensus on every single decision, which is stalling our execution. How do we break this bottleneck?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

Consensus is a disease in a growing business. It feels like teamwork, but it is actually a form of fear, a way to distribute responsibility so that nobody has to take the blame if things go wrong. To run a fast-moving company, you must replace consensus with clear, individual accountability.

Start by looking at your Accountability Chart. Every seat must have five major roles clearly defined, and there can only be one name in each seat. If a decision falls within a leader's seat, they own that decision. They do not need to ask the group for permission.

Your job as the owner, working alongside your Integrator, is to enforce this dynamic. When a leader brings a decision to the leadership team that they should be making themselves, do not allow the group to vote on it. Ask the leader, what is your recommendation, and when will you execute it?

This does not mean leaders should operate in silos without input. They should absolutely gather feedback from their peers, especially those impacted by the decision. Use the Trust Creation Process to listen and engage.

But once the feedback is gathered, the individual leader must make the final call. The rest of the team must then commit to supporting that decision, even if they would have done it differently. This is how you build a high-performance culture that moves with speed.