No One's Taking the Shot

An email sits in an inbox for the third day.

“Thoughts on next steps?” the subject line asks. Inside, twenty-seven slides of analysis. Market data. Customer feedback. Competitive landscape. Risk matrices. Everything you’d need to make a decision.

Except a decision.

Slide 26 lists four “potential paths forward.” Slide 27 suggests “further alignment needed.” The deck ends with “recommendations to be discussed.”

I’ve seen this deck before. Not this exact one, but its cousin. The one that lands in your inbox when someone has done all the work except the part that matters: choosing.

No one’s lying. The analysis is thorough. The options are real, but no one’s actually taking the shotm because somewhere between last quarter’s missed milestone and this morning’s standup, the entire team learned the same lesson: making the call is dangerous. Waiting for someone else to make it is safe.

This pattern plays out across businesses. Smart people doing careful work to avoid making actual decisions. It’s not incompetence. It’s not confusion.

It’s survival mode, and it kills momentum.

The Protection Pattern

You can feel it in every meeting. Updates are technically accurate but reveal nothing meaningful. Decisions get deferred to “align with stakeholders.” Risk gets rebranded as “prudence.” Progress hides behind process.

This isn’t laziness or apathy. It’s learned behavior. Somewhere along the way, our systems started teaching people that acting is dangerous, but reporting is safe.

We reward polish over progress. Dashboards over motion. Alignment over action. We say “own it,” but we design organizations where no one wants to take the shot.

In “Performance Theater in a Chart-Driven Culture”, when dashboards become shields rather than tools, teams optimize for the meeting, not the mission. Every delayed decision trains the organization to value appearance over progress.

When Systems Teach Stillness

This pattern becomes particularly damaging in our AI-accelerated world. While teams huddle in survival mode, the market moves at unprecedented speed. The gap between those who act and those who wait compounds daily.

Consider what I’ve observed repeatedly: organizations spending months perfecting their AI strategy while competitors launch imperfect but functional solutions. By the time the “perfect” strategy emerges, the market has already chosen winners.

The math is brutal. “The AI Adoption Cost Paradox” shows that waiting for perfect conditions can triple implementation costs while competitors gain insurmountable advantages. Yet teams continue choosing the perceived safety of inaction over the discomfort of imperfect progress.

The Hidden Architecture of Hesitation

Survival mode doesn’t announce itself. It embeds quietly in organizational structures:

Approval Layers: Each additional sign-off teaches teams that independent judgment is unwelcome. I’ve seen simple feature decisions require seven approvals, each adding days and draining ownership.

Consensus Requirements: When every decision needs universal agreement, bold moves become impossible. The lowest risk tolerance in the room sets the pace for everyone.

Punishment Asymmetry: Organizations that dissect failures while barely acknowledging successes train teams to avoid visibility. Why take the shot when missing means scrutiny but making it barely gets noticed?

Metric Obsession Without Context: When we measure activity over impact, teams learn to look busy rather than be effective. The dashboard shows green, but nothing actually moves forward.

The Compound Cost of Playing It Safe

Survival mode creates a doom loop that’s hard to break:

1. Decision Velocity Plummets: High-performing teams make decisions 3-5x faster than those stuck in approval cycles. Survival mode organizations move at the speed of their most cautious member.

2. Talent Exodus Accelerates: Your best people didn’t join to maintain the status quo. When organizations default to survival, high performers leave for places where they can actually build.

3. Innovation Suffocates: Real innovation requires risk. When teams optimize for survival, they stop experimenting, stop pushing boundaries, stop discovering what’s possible.

4. Trust Erodes: The longer teams wait for perfect conditions, the less they trust their own judgment. This erosion compounds, creating organizations incapable of decisive action even when opportunities are obvious.

Breaking Free: From Survival to Success

The path out requires deliberate system changes:

Redefine Safety: Make it safer to act than to wait. When someone takes a shot and misses, the first question should be “What did we learn?” not “Who’s to blame?”

Compress Decision Cycles: Set maximum timeframes for decisions. If you can’t decide in two weeks with available information, you’re not waiting for data—you’re avoiding responsibility.

Celebrate Intelligent Failures: Public recognition for well-reasoned attempts that didn’t work teaches teams that motion matters more than guarantees.

Remove Approval Theater: Audit every approval in your process. If the approver isn’t adding unique value or bearing real responsibility, eliminate the step.

Create Action Forcing Events: Regular demos, ship dates, and public commitments create healthy pressure for progress over perfection.

The Leadership Mirror

Here’s the uncomfortable truth: survival mode starts at the top. When leaders hesitate, teams learn hesitation. When we delay difficult decisions waiting for perfect information, we teach our organizations that action requires certainty.

That lesson from jumping off the boat in Punta Cana applies here: analysis doesn’t make the water warmer. Sometimes leadership means jumping first to show others it’s safe.

Ask yourself:

• When did you last make a decision with 70% confidence instead of waiting for 95%?
• How many approval layers exist because you’re uncomfortable delegating real authority?
• What message does your response to failures send about taking shots?

The Real Risk

In a world where AI can compress a competitor’s development cycle from months to weeks, where market windows close faster than ever, where first movers gain exponential advantages—playing it safe is the riskiest strategy.

Organizations optimizing for survival won’t gradually fall behind. They’ll wake up one day to find the game has completely changed while they were still discussing whether to play.

Time to Take the Shot

The boldest teams I’ve worked with aren’t fearless. They’ve simply built systems that make action feel safer than inaction. They’ve created cultures where taking the shot—even missing—moves them forward faster than perfect planning ever could.

Your team is waiting for permission they’ll never explicitly receive. They need systems that default to action, leaders who model decisive movement, and the psychological safety to know that intelligent failures are learning opportunities, not career limitations.

Stop designing teams to survive. Start building teams that take the shot.

The question isn’t whether your team can handle more risk. It’s whether your organization can survive playing it safe. What shot is your team not taking right now? And more importantly, what system is teaching them not to take it?