Postcards from the Field: Messy Decisions

Postcards from the Field is where I share brief field reports from my work with real leadership teams. Rather than polished case studies, these notes surface the moments that stop me mid-session and point to the everyday habits that shape performance when conditions are uncertain. My aim is to translate what I’m seeing in the field into practical value readers can apply in their own teams.

Last week, I was invited to work with a group of cross-functional team leaders from some of the top food brands in America. These are restaurant chains most of us have eaten in. The people in the room were responsible for bringing new menu items and product ideas to market. And right now, the pressure on those teams is intense.

Margins are tight. Supply chains remain unpredictable. Consumer demand is shifting in strange ways, from the ripple effects of GLP-1 drugs to the speed at which a TikTok food trend can suddenly reshape what people want to order. In that environment, innovation teams are being asked to move faster than ever.

Which is exactly why many of these companies rely on cross-functional teams. Marketing, culinary, supply chain, operations, finance. Everyone in the room, at the same table, trying to move a product idea from concept to launch.

Early in the workshop, one of the leaders said something that made the entire room nod. “Our cross-functional team is charged with bringing products to market faster,” she said. “But there isn’t a clear leader of the team. We all come from different functions. So decision rights are messy.”

That sentence captured the hidden challenge many of these teams were dealing with. 

The industry has done a good job recognizing the complexity of the work. That’s why cross-functional teams exist in the first place. But complexity on the outside often creates ambiguity on the inside. When many functions share responsibility, decision ownership can quietly blur. When that happens, work slows down in subtle ways.

People leave meetings unsure whose call it really was. Consultation expands beyond what the decision actually requires. Ownership shifts midstream as new voices enter the conversation. By the time the team realizes something needs to change, the work has already moved forward on the wrong assumptions.

The consequence shows up as rework, which is expensive.

As we explored these patterns together, one practical habit quickly caught fire in the room: decision hygiene.

The idea is straightforward. Before a new initiative conversation begins, the team labels the type of decision they are about to make so expectations are clear from the outset.

• Inform – One person owns the decision and keeps others aware.

• Consult – One person owns the decision but gathers input before making the call.

• Co-create – The group shares ownership and builds the decision together.

At first glance, the framework feels almost too simple. But the leaders in the room quickly recognized how much friction this small act of labeling could remove from their day-to-day work. Several companies immediately began discussing how to move the habit beyond a weekly team conversation. A few leaders described how decision labeling could be embedded directly into their project management tools, so that each workstream clearly indicated whether a decision was inform, consult, or co-create. That shift would allow the clarity to travel with the work itself, rather than relying on people to remember how a conversation was framed in a meeting days or weeks earlier.

Cross-functional teams bring together talented people who care deeply about outcomes. But when decision ownership is unclear, that energy can easily turn into overlapping input, extended debate, or workstreams moving forward on different assumptions. Over time, those patterns compound and slow execution.

Labeling the decision type early changes the operating rhythm. It clarifies who gathers input, who decides, and how much collaboration the moment actually requires. Meetings move with greater purpose and workstreams advance with fewer surprises.

In a room full of operators responsible for moving ideas from concept to market, that clarity felt immediately useful. Cross functional teams exist because the work itself is complex. But complexity only becomes an advantage when teams share visible habits for how decisions get made. Decision hygiene is one of those habits. It gives teams a simple way to keep momentum and rise under pressure when the waves keep coming.