4 Signs Your Workplace Has Made Decision Making Impossible
4 Signs Your Workplace Has Made Decision Making Impossible
Published on Inc., Jun 10, 2025, by Shayne Fitz-Coy.
Only 45 percent of employees know what’s expected of them at work, according to Gallup’s latest research on workplace engagement. At the same time, an entrepreneur named Nell Wulfhart is charging executives $247 per call to make decisions for them because, as she puts it, “Your therapist won’t tell you what to do, but I will.”
When well-compensated leaders are paying to outsource their choices, what does that say about the state of decision making in modern workplaces? Consider Meta’s real estate decisions: The company expanded its footprint during COVID in 2020, then put 130,000 square feet up for sublease in 2024. These aren’t isolated incidents; tech companies have all been downsizing after expanding substantially.
A few years ago, I interviewed someone who crystallized this problem for me. She told me her ideal job was one that required her to not have to think. When I asked what she meant, she replied, straight-faced, “I want to be a robot.”
At first, I was shocked. But as I’ve learned more about decision fatigue and workplace confusion, I’ve realized she wasn’t lazy. She was overwhelmed in a system that had made good decision-making nearly impossible.
Decision making is difficult
In today’s unclear, changing, hybrid workplaces, decision making has become so complex and risky that many employees are retreating into rigidity to protect themselves from impossible situations.
Yes, we flog employees for being disengaged and detached, but it’s poor operational decision making that costs companies 3 percent of profits annually. Remarkably, while McKinsey identified these decision-making flaws 16 years ago, there’s been little follow-up, suggesting that these problems persist.
Despite leaders mandating in-person work to improve collaboration and mentorship, employees report that their organizations are failing at these exact practices.
If executives struggle with this fundamental decision-making skill, how can we expect front-line employees to navigate daily choices with confidence?
How to know your workplace is failing at decision making
Here are four signs your workplace has made decision making impossible and what you can do to fix it.
- People ask permission for decisions they’ve made before
When employees constantly seek approval for routine choices, they’re not being lazy. They’re responding rationally to unclear consequences and shifting expectations.
In environments where the rules change frequently and mistakes are punished harshly, asking permission becomes a survival strategy. Why risk making the “wrong” decision when you can get someone else to own the outcome?
The fix: Stop the “ask permission for everything” culture by telling people exactly what they can decide on their own. Create a simple chart showing who can spend how much money, approve which changes, or make what decisions without getting approval first. For example: Customer service reps can approve refunds up to $500, department managers can hire contractors up to $5,000, and team leads can change project timelines by up to two weeks. Most importantly, stick to these rules even when things get busy or chaotic.
- They resist new processes or technologies
When employees push back against change, it’s often because they’ve learned that adaptation is risky. In unstable environments, mastering one approach feels safer than constantly learning new ones.
My job candidate exemplified this perfectly. Despite having valuable experience, she wanted to eliminate the strategic thinking that would have made her exceptional at the role. She’d learned that thinking led to uncertainty, and uncertainty led to problems.
The fix: Acknowledge the emotional labor of constant change. Implement changes gradually, explain change before during and after the change, preferably getting buy-in throughout the process. Create psychological safety around learning curves. Most importantly, stop treating change resistance as a character defect.
- They show no curiosity about the business
Employees who complete tasks without asking “why” aren’t necessarily disengaged. They may have learned that understanding the bigger picture doesn’t help them succeed and might make their job harder.
When business strategies shift frequently and individual contributions feel disconnected from results, it becomes rational to focus narrowly on assigned tasks rather than waste energy on context that might change tomorrow.
The fix: Share consistent updates about how individual work connects to business results. But more importantly, make sure that connection is real and stable enough to be worth understanding.
- They avoid feedback and performance discussions
Resistance to feedback often signals that employees have learned feedback conversations are unpredictable and potentially harmful rather than helpful.
In many organizations, “feedback” has become a catch-all for criticism, course corrections, and after-the-fact rule changes. When employees can’t predict what feedback conversations will contain or how they’ll be used, avoiding them becomes self-protection.
The fix: Separate feedback into clear categories: recognition, course correction, and development planning. Make the purpose and outcomes of each conversation predictable and constructive.
Make good decisions possible again
The woman who wanted to be a robot wasn’t giving up on thinking. She was giving up on an impossible situation. The real problem isn’t employee disengagement; it’s that we’ve created workplaces where good decision making has become nearly impossible.
When expectations shift constantly, consequences are unclear, and mistakes are punished rather than learned from. In this environment, retreating into rigid routines is the rational response. Even executives are paying hundreds of dollars to outsource difficult choices to consultants and consultants are outsourcing decisions to AI because the complexity is unmanageable.
Here’s the irony: Employees who retreat into robot-like behavior are making themselves obsolete faster than AI ever could. The roles that will survive automation are those requiring judgment, creativity, and complex decision making - exactly the skills your “robot-seeking” employees are abandoning.
Your response to this retreat will determine whether you rebuild a thinking organization or manage a team of human robots who add minimal value to your business. The companies that will thrive are those that make good decision making possible, supported, and safe.
Start by auditing your own organization:
How often do your expectations change?
How clear are the consequences of different choices?
How safe is it for people to make imperfect decisions and learn from them?
The future belongs to organizations that can keep their people thinking, growing, and deciding. But first, you have to create conditions where that’s possible.
Originally published in Inc.