A managing partner has a folder open on her desk. The folder is the same one she had open in March. And again in June. The decision is whether to close the second office. She has run the numbers four times. Each time, the conclusion is the same. Each time she puts the folder away.
The team has stopped raising it in monthly meetings. They have started running parallel rosters in case the answer changes. The senior accountant has stopped asking. The lease renewal is in eleven weeks. She told herself she would handle it on Sunday night. On Sunday night, she opened the folder and closed it again.
Pattern: The Circling Decision
A decision that returns every few weeks for months without being made. The owner knows the answer. The blockage is elsewhere. Small decisions get made or forgotten. This one comes back. Each return costs the same energy as the first. The cost compounds because the firm begins to build around the absence rather than waiting for the call.
Analysis
Trigger. The decision arrives with a deadline far enough away to defer once.
First circle. The owner works through it, lands on the likely answer, files it.
Quiet adjustment. The team senses the call has not been made. They build around the absence; parallel rosters, hedged plans, soft commitments to staff and clients.
Second circle. The owner reopens the file. The conclusion is the same. Back in the drawer.
Workarounds harden. Decisions further down the line depend on the missing one. Reversing them costs more than making them would have.
Forced call. A client, a landlord, a partner, or a resignation makes the decision unavoidable. It is made under pressure with less room than it had a year before.
By the time someone calls for help, the original decision has become three decisions, and none of them is cheap.
Why It Matters
Stalled decisions are not free. The firm pays for them in parallel structures, soft commitments, and the slow erosion of confidence in the owner’s authority. By the time the call is forced, the optionality has gone, and the cost has compounded. The decision was made twelve months ago. The owner has not yet acknowledged it.
Open a blank document tonight. Write down every decision you have circled this year without making. Date each one.