Why Are You Deciding This Again?
Harish Kumar Bhamidipati
Co-Founder & Managing Partner | Align By Design / Choose To Thinq · Closing Think-Say-Do Gaps so growth-stage firms scale with speed & coherence
Many of you know that I keep reminding (!!) CEOs that they should see themselves as the Chief Reminder Officer. That does not mean you keep repeating decisions. That's not leadership. It's leakage.
What do you call a decision that keeps coming back?
Not a complex one.
Not a strategic one.
Just an unowned one.
We see this in many scaling companies:
The founder is asked the same questions every quarter.
Teams don’t feel confident acting on past calls.
Strategic decisions become recurring meetings.
Leaders are solving the same fires, with more headcount.
This isn’t a memory problem. It’s a looping problem.
And looping has a cost.
The hidden cost of decision loops
At first, you don’t notice it.
But soon, your bandwidth goes to clarifying yesterday’s calls instead of making tomorrow’s.
Your team hesitates, unsure if a decision is still valid.
You become the bottleneck, without realizing it.
Each repeated decision is a signal:
Of poor documentation (was the decision recorded?)
Of low trust (was it delegated or just delayed?)
Of unclear ownership (who runs with it now?)
Of shifting context (is the org unsure how to apply it today?)
How to spot if you’re in a decision loop
Ask yourself and your leadership team:
“What decisions have we made more than once this year?”
“Where do things come back to me that should’ve been settled?”
“Which decisions feel like 'same film, different show' across functions?”
“Do we keep re-litigating things after every re-org or leader change?”
If the same topic comes back despite clarity, it’s likely an org structure issue.
If it comes back because of confusion, it’s likely a delegation issue.
If it never truly got decided, that’s a leadership issue.
How to break the loop
Make decisions findable.
Name the owner.
Set expiry dates.
Delegate intent, not just tasks.
Watch what gets escalated.
Closing Thought:
Repeated decisions aren’t a time issue.
They’re a signal your org hasn’t scaled how decisions are made, owned, and carried forward.
If you’re still the “chief memory officer,” you’re not building a leadership team.
You’re babysitting your own backlog.
Stay aligned,
-Harish and the ABD Team
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Harish Kumar Bhamidipati in my experience if the prior decision did not give desired outcome then we have to go back again and again.