Decisions don’t stall because people disagree. They stall because no one owns them.
Interview with Maria Golitsyna - B2B Growth & Enterprise Strategy Expert
Most organisations don’t struggle with ideas.
They struggle with decisions.
What looks like alignment at the top rarely survives contact with execution. A direction is agreed. It makes sense. It moves forward.
Then it slows.
Not because the idea changes.
Because the system around it does.
Legal re-checks risk.
Finance re-checks cost.
Operations re-checks feasibility.
The same decision gets reopened, one layer at a time.
By the time it reaches execution, it is no longer a decision.
It is a series of negotiations.
This is rarely explained early on.
You’re taught how to build.
Less often how things actually move.
Why This Matters Now
Organisations are operating under increasing pressure. More stakeholders.
More oversight.
More internal accountability.
At the same time, they are expected to move faster.
That combination creates friction.
Decisions need alignment.
Alignment slows decisions.
The result is not disagreement.
It is delay.
This shows up consistently in large-scale transformation efforts. McKinsey has noted that many initiatives fail not because the strategy is wrong, but because execution breaks down, often at the point where ownership and accountability become unclear.
Most decisions don’t fail in the room where they are made.
They fail afterwards.
When ownership disappears.
When accountability is shared.
When no one is responsible for carrying them through.
Case Pattern: When Alignment Isn’t Enough
Alignment is often treated as the goal.
Once everyone agrees, the assumption is that execution will follow.
In practice, alignment is where complexity begins.
A decision that crosses functions will be reinterpreted at each stage. What was acceptable at a strategic level is reconsidered in legal, recalculated in finance, and re-scoped in operations.
Each step is rational.
Together, they create friction.
The decision doesn’t stop.
It slows until momentum disappears.
This is why so many initiatives feel agreed but never progress.
The issue is not disagreement.
It is ownership.
Exclusive Interview
Maria Golitsyna - B2B Growth & Enterprise Strategy Expert
Maria works across enterprise sales, partnerships and market expansion, with direct exposure to how decisions move across legal, finance and operations in large organisations.
1. Where decisions actually stall
WINGS: In many organisations, alignment exists in principle yet progress still slows or stops. From your experience, where does that shift happen in practice?
Maria:
In most organisations, decisions don’t stall at the point of disagreement — they stall after alignment, when ownership disappears. On paper, everyone agrees. In reality, no one owns the outcome. The biggest slowdown happens when a decision moves from strategy into execution. At that point, it crosses legal, finance, and operations, and each function re-evaluates it through a different lens: risk, cost, or feasibility.
What looked like alignment at the top becomes re-negotiation at every layer.
Another common point of stall is when there is no single decision owner. When multiple stakeholders are “involved,” decisions become reversible by default, and that creates hesitation. Progress doesn’t stop because people disagree. It stops because no one is structurally responsible for moving it forward.
2. Fragmented accountability
WINGS: Legal, finance and operations often prioritise different outcomes. Where does this fragmentation create the most friction?
Maria: Fragmentation shows up most clearly when a decision starts to have consequences.
Legal protects risk. Finance protects cost. Operations protects delivery.
Each function is doing its job, but no one is responsible for the outcome as a whole.
In practice, this creates a pattern where decisions get delayed because each team is waiting for another function to take the first risk.
I’ve seen this often in enterprise sales. A deal is commercially aligned, but it slows down internally because legal pushes for stricter terms, finance questions margins, and operations flags execution constraints.
None of these are wrong. Together, they create inertia.
3. When the wrong decision still moves forward
WINGS: Where have you seen a decision move forward even though most people knew it wasn’t the right one?
Maria:
Wrong decisions often move forward not because people believe in them, but because the cost of stopping is higher than the cost of continuing. Once time, budget, and alignment have already been invested, momentum takes over.
Decisions are driven less by quality and more by commitment. I’ve seen situations where teams questioned the direction internally but still moved forward because reversing it would require re-aligning stakeholders and reopening approvals. Another factor is ownership. If a decision is strongly associated with a senior stakeholder, it becomes harder to challenge, even when concerns are obvious.
So the system doesn’t optimise for the best decision. It optimises for continuity.
4. What strong operators do differently
WINGS: Some professionals are able to move decisions forward more effectively than others. What do they do differently?
Maria:
Strong operators don’t focus on pushing decisions, they focus on making them move. They identify the real decision owner early. Not the loudest stakeholder, but the one with authority to move things forward.
They align stakeholders individually, not collectively. Group alignment often hides disagreement. Strong operators resolve concerns one-on-one before bringing decisions into a shared space. And they translate decisions across functions. What makes sense commercially doesn’t always make sense legally or operationally. They reframe the same decision in the language each function understands.
They don’t assume alignment will happen. They build it.
5. Early-career perspective
WINGS: What do early-career professionals misunderstand about how decisions are made?
Maria:
Early-career professionals often assume decisions are made based on logic or the “best” solution. In reality, decisions are shaped by ownership, risk, and internal alignment. Being right is not enough to move a decision forward. The strongest early-career professionals learn how decisions actually travel through an organisation, who decides, where things slow down, and what concerns are not said openly.
Trust in these environments is built not just through expertise, but through awareness, understanding stakeholders, timing, and internal dynamics.
Career Clarity: How Decisions Actually Move
Most people are trained to contribute ideas.
Fewer are trained to move them.
Inside organisations, those are different skills.
Ideas require competence.
Decisions require coordination.
Understanding where ownership sits changes how you operate.
Understanding where decisions slow changes how you prepare.
The people who progress early are not always the most technically strong.
They are the ones who reduce friction.
They know who to involve.
When to involve them.
And how to move something forward without reopening it at every step.
Cross Sector Relevance
This pattern repeats across industries.
In AI, projects stall between development and approval.
In healthcare, they stall between validation and integration.
In enterprise, they stall between alignment and execution.
Different contexts.
Same structure.
Decisions don’t fail because they are wrong.
They fail because they are not carried.
Closing
Organisations don’t lack ideas.
They lack ownership.
What looks like complexity is often a simple absence of responsibility at the point where decisions need to move.
Once that gap appears, alignment becomes a loop.
The people who understand this early don’t just contribute.
They move things forward.
That is where leverage sits.