On our recent learning expedition we took 20 leaders to some of the world’s most innovative organisations in Silicon Valley, where we were treated to a masterclass in ‘speed of light’ innovation. Exhausted, inspired and yet highly motivated, here we are, providing you with everything you need to know about high-velocity decision-making, as demonstrated by some of the world’s most successful businesses who are creating the structures they need to be able to operate at warp speed, gaining critical headway in the race to the finishing line.

Speed is Strategy

In an age of AI, rapid technological shifts, and geopolitical uncertainty, speed is strategy. On our Wavelength USA 2025 tour, we visited Amazon, Nvidia, Netflix, and LinkedIn. There was one theme that emerged loud and clear: it’s not just the ideas that give these companies their edge, it’s how they make decisions.

But speed isn’t a byproduct of chaos. In fact, to quote one of our hosts, it is speed itself that actually results in control. Although each organisation shared very different approaches, there was a common thread: the ability to operate at speed is the result of intentional design – leaders in large enterprises, be encouraged, it can be done:

• Flatter structures designed to avoid unnecessary escalation.

• Empowered teams that are trusted to make good calls.

• Leadership frameworks that help distinguish between decisions that can be made quickly versus those requiring more care.

As Gary Klein (decision-making expert and author of Sources of Power) describes it, decision-making under uncertainty is about balancing action with learning. Great leaders create conditions where decisions are treated as experiments, not threats. And it’s no coincidence that the companies moving at the “speed of light” are also those most deliberate about how they structure authority, ownership, and accountability. Zoe Scaman, who joined us on our trip, referred to building “heuristics, not hierarchies”.

Why is Decision-Making Often Broken?
So often we hear the challenge for entrepreneurs and start ups as they scale up is how to maintain the agility that got them to where they are. We hear of the risk facing all organisations as they grow and become more complex:

• Endless consensus-building

• Fear of failure or blame

• Unclear ownership of decisions

• Bureaucratic processes that prioritise control over speed

This rang true, especially for those participants amongst our group, operating in highly regulated sectors, where due diligence and compliance are so critical. As Mark Schwartz, who shared his insights during our visit to Amazon, argues in A Seat at the Table, “Bureaucracy isn’t bad. But when it’s designed to protect the status quo, it stifles innovation. When it’s designed to support decision-making, it accelerates it.”

The companies we visited have moved beyond monolithic structures and hierarchical, cautious decision-making cultures to something more dynamic — and deliberate:

10 Structures and Approaches to Build Decision-Making Cultures for Speed

1. Informed Captains (Netflix)
   Empower the most informed person, not the most senior, to lead specific decisions. Avoid “decision-making by committee.” Accountability with expertise beats hierarchy. Remember it is the responsibility of great leaders to build the culture’s where creativity and expertise can come together to serve the customer.

2. Flatten the Structure (Nvidia)
   Reduce unnecessary layers of approval. The people with the knowledge and the data are given permission and the expectation to move and by reframing what you measure, you can ensure you’re rewarding the actions you need to achieve pace and strategic advantage.

3. Push Decisions to the Edges (Amazon)
   Localise authority where the knowledge resides. Distributed leadership should be encouraged to facilitate distributed decision-making. It also builds resilience and responsiveness across the organisation. Innovation teams act as internal entrepreneurs, supported by service teams who operate horizontally.

4. One-Way vs. Two-Way Door Decisions (Amazon)
   Using this framework can prevent over-escalation and to help contributors understand their scope and role in the decision-making process. If a decision can be reversed (two-way door), make it quickly and lower in the organisation. This doesn’t mean leaders aren’t kept in the loop but they provide the parameters within which employees can move forward. Save senior leadership for irreversible, “one-way door” decisions. This approach cannot sit in isolation however – framing success factors and providing catch-alls for failure are important. What is your tolerance ratio for acceptable failures? 5 out of 20? 10 out of 20? How will you unlock processes to allow this to happen? Then define this clearly in advance and stand by what you say. If the last person who tried and failed was fired, what message does this send out? This is where heuristics are important. By building checks into your processes who don’t need to sacrifice speed for success. Several organisations shared different ways this could be done – processes which allowed asking good questions like who else has seen this plan? Who else has dissented, challenged or approved it?

5. Disagree and Commit
   Promote open debate, and provide psychologically safe spaces where people can disagree, respectfully but once the decision is made, align and move. It is critical for successful implementation that there is no hidden resistance. No passive noncompliance, just commitment and effective, aligned execution.

6. Pre-Mortems and Red Teams (Netflix/Agile practice)
   Before launching major initiatives, it is helpful to conduct exercises imagining what could go wrong. This increases psychological safety around experimentation by proactively identifying risk and mitigating for it.

7. Internal Service Provider Model (Amazon)
   Build internal teams whose job is to serve innovation teams. Consider if their performance is measured by how well they enable decision-making and progress — rather than by outputs. What behaviours do you see playing out currently and how can you restructure the dynamics to ensure the best work is being done? What could you achieve if you worked with your teams to reframe their roles to be enablers, rather than gatekeepers. We heard a Creative Lead in one organisation recommend: ‘make friends with legal’, an approach that had proven to unlock performance and the ability to innovate, building alliances that worked in service of driving customer delight.

8. Decision Logs and Debriefs
   Do you track major decisions and their rationales? Recording these events creates a useful log that builds organisational memory, sharpening future decision-making, and speeding up onboarding of new leaders. This supports a culture of learning that is embedded across the organisation.

9. Streamline Bureaucracy (Mark Schwartz)
   While we heard much about building governance frameworks and how this is critical when it comes to development of technology like agentic AI, this is not a once and done activity. It is important to regularly audit governance processes to identify bottlenecks. Bureaucracy should be in service of the mission, not standing in its way. It should facilitate, not stifle progress. To hear more about Mark’s insights on operation excellence you can check out his profile and we highly recommend his book in which you can read more about the sumo wrestler, razor and monkey approach to bureaucracy.

10. Decision Timeboxing
    Simple but highly effective, its a good idea to limit the time allocated for decisions. Such constraint will sharpen focus. Parkinson’s Law applies: give a decision 2 weeks, and it will take 2 weeks. Give it 2 days, and the essentials will surface quickly.

Decision-Making Is a Cultural Issue

Fast decision-making only works when the culture supports it. And building the cullture you need, is the most important responsibility of any leader.

That means:
✔ Building trust in your teams
✔ Leadership modelling empowerment
✔ Establishing the systems and frameworks to enable and empower, rather than control

It’s not just about making better decisions — it’s about creating an environment where better decisions happen naturally, every day.

Ask yourself — have you designed your organisation for decision-making momentum, or are your best people stuck waiting for permission?

If you want to innovate, you have to decide to win.