Why some decisions never land

A few months ago I was in a session with a senior team, and their meeting wasn’t moving.

Their brief said they’d been trying to decide whether to expand into a new line or consolidate. Conversations kept stalling. At first it looked like classic misalignment—some members not fully committed, others holding back.

But that didn’t fit. Everyone was engaged and making coherent points. Something else was happening.

Then I noticed it. One leader kept referencing a decision made two years ago. Another was focused entirely on last quarter’s misses. A third was describing their ideal market position in 18 months, as if it were already in the bag.

Each person was operating from a completely different moment in time.

The past as verdict

I’ve watched teams argue against a decision by saying: “We tried something similar in 2019 and it didn’t work.”

When I ask what actually happened in 2019, the conditions were completely different: different market, team, and timing. What failed then might succeed now. But the conversation never gets there. One past failure has become a permanent ‘never.’

The past is being used as a verdict, not as evidence.

The most recent data point becomes the only one

One weak quarter triggers an entire strategy review. Despite three years of strong performance, the team starts questioning everything because of last quarter’s missed targets.

Or a high-profile incident reshapes the road map. A customer data breach makes headlines, and suddenly the team triples its security budget while structural risks that have been building for years go unaddressed.

This isn’t an over-reactive team. It’s what happens when the most vivid and recent data point is treated as the only one that matters.

The future feels certain (or catastrophic)

Three strong quarters and the team sets targets as if the fourth will obviously follow. Momentum is being treated as a guarantee.

Or the opposite: “Our entire road map collapses if we miss this deadline.” One missed milestone—still an assumption—becomes an existential threat. The logic sounds compelling until you check whether that chain reaction has ever actually happened before.

Both errors have the same root: the team isn’t checking its predictions against its own track record.

Why it’s hard to see from the inside

Each person’s position is locally defensible.

The person anchored to the past is protecting continuity and institutional memory. The person focused on last quarter is responding to what the organization is feeling right now. The person projecting into the future is doing exactly what their role asks of them.

No one is wrong. But everyone is in a different conversation. So the meeting continues, everyone speaks, and nothing moves.

Three antidotes

When I’m facilitating and I notice this pattern, what I usually say is something like:

“It seems to me like you’re starting from different viewpoints. That’s understandable—but there’s an order of things. So let’s reset for a moment. Do we have the right facts on the table? Is our thinking too narrow? And once we’re aligned on that, we’ll take the next step.”

If you’re navigating this without a facilitator, here are three questions; one for each error:

Past as verdict: “What’s different now?” Force the comparison before accepting the historical case as closed.

Recency bias: “Is this typical, or is this an outlier?” Name it as one data point, not the whole story.

False certainty: “What would have to be true for this to play out the way we’re assuming?” This makes the hidden assumptions visible.

Three errors. Three questions. Most of the time, the decision unlocks from there.

One more thing

I use a set of cognitive bias cards in sessions—including the three patterns above—as a tool for teams to recognize their own thinking errors in real time.

— Govert

First published in the Professional Closeness Digest on 16 April 2026.