Everyone could see the structure would not hold. The decision to change it still took months.
A work breakdown structure had been built early, and the cost structure was meant to dock onto it. It did not fit. That was clear within weeks — to the programme team, to finance, to anyone who looked. What followed was not a debate about whether to fix it. It was a long, quiet circling.
The proposal went from programme execution to finance and back. Finance needed the cost structure to align before it could commit. Execution needed finance to confirm before it would rebuild. Three entities in three regions were involved, and their processes were never fully aligned to begin with. So the same question moved between desks, gathering comments, losing none of its urgency and gaining no decision.
This is decision latency: the time between when a problem becomes visible and when someone actually decides. It is rarely a speed problem. It is a structural one.
Latency does not come from people being slow. It comes from a decision whose owner is not defined across the boundary it has to cross. When a call sits between two functions — or three entities — and no single role is accountable for it, the structure has no mechanism to close it. So it stays open. And an open decision does not feel like a failure. It feels like diligence.
The cost is real, but it is booked nowhere. Every week the old structure stays in place, the programme runs on a foundation everyone has already agreed is wrong. Assumptions age. Options quietly expire. The eventual decision is not better for the wait — it is only later.
Here is what to measure. Take one decision that recently took too long. Mark two dates: when the problem first became visible, and when the decision was finally made. The gap is your latency. Then ask the harder question: during that gap, was anyone clearly accountable for closing it — across every function and entity it touched?
If the answer is no, the latency was not a delay. It was a missing owner, measured in weeks.
Cordula Buss · Plan A2C / Helping finance and programme leaders build steering logic that works.