Implicit decisions

Decisions, decisions, decisions. They might as well fill the bulk of a manager’s time. There are plenty of those around: good, bad, indifferent, delayed, outstanding, feared, eagerly anticipated, discounted, etc.
The decisions on the business planet abound and provide, albeit sometimes unwelcomed, feed for the wide population of managers and executives of a variety of ranks. From a decision regarding a transformational deal that lands on the table of the board of directors to a decision on the television channel or the duration of a TV-spots of a new advertising campaign. Purchase of a new accounting system, an investment into a new manufacturing facility, recruitment of a new VP Research & Development these are just a few examples of a diversified bag of decisions that we constantly need to face. They will tend to vary as to their nature, their importance or urgency and yet, they will share a common trait — they will tend to be accompanied by an entourage, an entourage of a decision-making process and decision-making participants.
The size and the composition of an entourage is clearly a function of the gravity of a decision and its potential impact, be it desired or otherwise. The number of departments, analysts and experts of any kind, both in-house or external will be larger, the more is at stake. The number of reports, presentations meetings and iterative loops will also reflect the appetite of the decision makes to cover their backs. Other thing being equal, risk-adverse attitude of decision maker will inflate the size of the entourage and protract the period of gestation. But even a fairly minor decision to be taken by a risk-taking executive will tend to be accompanied by a process albeit simplified in form and limited in its duration.
Then, there are decisions that are not accompanied by any entourage. This simply because the stakes are low, their numbers are significant and it would be impractical, or outright detrimental, if a less or more formal process was applied in reaching them. It might be that the circumstances demand an instant response and consequently any deliberations must be squeezed into a split of a second that we have at our disposal. Circumstances apart, the mentality of a decision maker (impulsiveness) combined with a sufficient level of autonomy will lead to decisions deprived of the process entourage.
I have tried to retrospect about decision-making process over the years I have discovered a type of decisions that do not fall into those two broad categories. I would refer to them as implicit decisions. I suspect that these are often mistreated, often to the detriment of the unaware decision makers.
How much time/effort we should allocated to this project, as different from others? How long does it make sense to think about it on your own and when it makes sense to get a feedback from others? Up to when it makes sense to exchange ideas/opinions via emails and when it makes sense to have a conference call or a meeting? Does the exchange of views take the discussion further or are we circling around a block? How long should we discuss the issue and when should we take a decision? How many iterations do we need and who should be involved in each one of them? Should we rethink the decision process originally envisaged?
The common denominator of implicit decisions is that they nearly always lack even a rudimentary conscious analytical support. They also tend to be process rather than subject related. Process, one could argue being less exciting less news-generating. But this does not mean less important.
I would like to venture a hypothesis that the attention given to these decision is very often disproportionally small considering their potential importance. It might be that we do not perceive them as important or it might be that we do but are unwilling to address them explicitly in order not to rock the boat. It might be that we fear that dwelling on them will expose our vulnerabilities or insecurities. There might be therefore many reasons as to why the implicit decisions do not get attention they deserve. Irrespective of the driver of our inability/reluctance to ponder upon them we might be committing the error of omission and we do so at our own peril.
