What if the future of management wasn’t about being right more often… but about daring to be wrong more intelligently?

06 October 2025
Collective intelligence, Decision by consent, Tension management

When analysis replaces momentum

In many organisations, decision-making has become an endurance sport.
We analyse, we consult, we debate, we postpone. We want to be sure before we act — sure of the right idea, the right strategy, the right approval.
But by waiting to be ready, we miss the chance to get feedback from the field — the only feedback that truly reveals whether a decision holds up or needs adjusting.

In hierarchical structures, this phenomenon is amplified: every decision climbs up and down the chain, rewritten and renegotiated along the way. Caution smothers responsiveness.

So perhaps the real question is no longer “How can we decide better?” but rather “How can we decide more vividly?”

Speed without haste

Some organisations have found the key: they combine two complementary tools — decision by consent and tension management.

Decision by consent: Rather than seeking absolute consensus, the group moves forward as soon as there is no serious objection to trying. The goal isn’t the perfect solution, but the next action that’s good enough to test.
This approach changes our relationship with risk. Decision-making becomes exploration, not a gamble.

Tension management: For consent-based decisions to work, they must be paired with a way to handle tensions. This allows anyone, once a decision has been tried and lived, to flag what isn’t working and open a new space for adjustment.
A natural loop emerges: decide, experiment, decide again, experiment again — and so on.

An organisation that learns at this pace becomes fluid, adaptive, and alive. Toyota and LEGO are two striking examples.

Toyota – deciding as close to the ground as possible

Long before agility became a buzzword, Toyota was already practising living decision-making.
In its factories, any operator can stop production if they notice an anomaly.
This autonomy isn’t an exception but a principle: the person who sees the problem is the one best placed to act.
At the heart of Kaizen, this approach turns every tension into an opportunity for immediate adjustment.
The result: local, fast decisions — and an organisation that learns continuously.

LEGO – adjusting through play

After a crisis in the early 2000s, LEGO regained its momentum by weaving experimentation into its model.
Through LEGO Ideas, users now propose and test new creations themselves.
Decisions no longer come from the top, but from the field — that of the community.
Each idea becomes a real-world test: observe, adjust, relaunch.
In doing so, LEGO rediscovered its creative agility without abandoning its hierarchical structure.

Introducing movement into a structured organisation

One might think these practices only apply to tech companies.
In reality, they can take root in any organisation — even highly hierarchical ones — once their underlying logic is understood.

It only takes three simple levers:

Experiment on a small scale: choose a concrete topic and frame a decision to test through consent.
Create a space for adjustment: schedule regular moments to capture the “tensions” that arise from experience.
Turn tensions into new decisions: each time an issue surfaces, revisit it through another consent-based decision.

Decisions stop being points of blockage and become continuous flows.
Management finds its rhythm again, teams feel heard, and the organisation grows more attuned to its environment.

Act first, always learn

The real challenge isn’t to decide faster, but to bring movement back into decision-making.
Act when it’s good enough to try. Adjust when the field calls for it.