Why work stalls even when everyone is capable

Most stalled work doesn’t look like failure.

It looks busy.

Calendars are full. Documents are polished. Slack is active. Everyone involved is competent, motivated, and broadly aligned on what “good” looks like. And yet: weeks pass, decisions drift, and progress feels oddly fragile — as if it could collapse under the slightest pressure.

This is the condition many organisations quietly accept as normal.

We usually explain it in flattering terms. It’s complex. There are lots of stakeholders. We need more input. We can’t rush this. All of which are sometimes true — and often incomplete.

Because capability is rarely the limiting factor.

Most stalled work is not blocked by skill, effort, or intelligence. It’s blocked by unresolved questions that no one feels authorised — or safe — to settle.

How capable work actually stalls

When work slows down in capable teams, a few patterns show up again and again.

Ownership is distributed until it disappears.
Everyone contributes; no one decides. Responsibility is shared, but accountability is vague. Decisions are framed as collaborative discussions, but there’s no clear moment where discussion ends and commitment begins. The result isn’t harmony — it’s drift.

Uncertainty is mistaken for risk.
Not knowing becomes a reason to wait, rather than a prompt to test, choose, or narrow the question. Teams keep asking for “more information” when what they really need is to decide what they’re willing to assume — and live with. Work stalls not because the risk is too high, but because the tolerance for being wrong is too low.

Alignment is performed rather than achieved.
Status updates replace decisions. Meetings become places to signal agreement without resolving disagreement. Everyone leaves the room believing they’re aligned, until the next meeting reveals they were aligned on different interpretations of the same words.

Process becomes a proxy for progress.
Frameworks, backlogs, roadmaps, and rituals are valuable tools — but they’re often used to avoid the discomfort of judgement. When the work is hard to decide, adding structure feels safer than taking a position. Motion replaces movement.

None of this is about bad people or broken cultures. In fact, it often emerges in organisations that value inclusion, consensus, and care. The stall is a side effect of good intentions colliding with ambiguous authority.

The real reason work slows down

The uncomfortable truth is this:

Work slows down when the cost of deciding feels higher than the cost of waiting.

Waiting distributes responsibility. Deciding concentrates it.

So people wait. Collectively. Politely. Indefinitely.

This is why exhortations to “move faster” rarely help. Urgency doesn’t resolve ambiguity. It just adds pressure on top of it. And pressure, without clarity, usually makes teams more cautious — not less.

Speed, when it does appear, tends to be local and accidental. A small group bypasses the system. Someone senior intervenes. A deadline forces an artificial choice. Progress happens despite the system, not because of it.

The aim of this series isn’t to glorify speed for its own sake. It’s to examine why capable organisations so often design environments where important work takes longer than it needs to — and where trivial work consumes disproportionate energy.

Before talking about prioritisation, meetings, or methods, it’s worth sitting with this quieter diagnosis:

Most delays are not execution problems.
- They’re decision problems in disguise.

What to do instead (or at least start to do)

If stalled work is usually a decision problem, the response isn’t more urgency or better tooling. It’s changing how — and when — decisions are allowed to happen.

A few starting moves that don’t require a reorg, a new process, or executive theatre:

Make the real question explicit — in writing.
Before another meeting or doc, ask: What decision are we actually trying to make? Not “align on next steps.” Not “explore options.” The decision itself. If the question feels uncomfortable to write down, that’s usually the point.

Name who decides — even if it feels awkward.
Consensus is not a decision mechanism; it’s a discussion style. Decisions need an owner. Not a facilitator. Not a steering group. One person is accountable for choosing and living with the consequences.

Separate “needs more evidence” from “we’re not ready to choose.”
Evidence reduces uncertainty. It does not remove responsibility. If more data wouldn’t change the decision, stop asking for it. If it would, be explicit about what you’re trying to learn — and by when.

Time-box the ambiguity, not the work.
Instead of saying “we’ll decide when we’re ready,” decide when the decision must be made — even if it’s provisional. Drift is rarely neutral; it usually favours the status quo.

Treat delay as a choice, not a default.
Waiting is sometimes correct. But it should be chosen openly, rather than smuggled in under the language of caution.

None of this guarantees better decisions.
But it does make decision-making visible, which is usually what’s been missing.

A few quotes worth sitting with

“Whenever you see a successful business, someone once made a courageous decision.”
— Peter F. Drucker

“What gets us into trouble is not what we don’t know. It’s what we know for sure that just ain’t so.”
— Mark Twain (commonly attributed)

“In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.”
— Dwight D. Eisenhower

“If you’re not prepared to be wrong, you’ll never come up with anything original.”
— Ken Robinson

A brief note on using ChatGPT

One practical aid: tools like ChatGPT can help before work stalls, as a private space to clarify thinking.

Useful prompts are simple: “What decision are we actually trying to make?” “What would we have to believe for this option to be right?”, “What are we treating as facts that are really assumptions?”, or “If we delay this by three months, what decision are we implicitly making?”

Used this way, the tool doesn’t replace judgment — it exposes where judgment is being avoided.

If you’re interested in a facilitated Decision Spike to help, you can read more about it here