Decision Debt: When Memory Becomes the Operating System
- Rashmi Kulkarni
- Sep 22
- 5 min read
(The Cognitive Load Trap, Week 2)
Introduction: The Rules You Carry in Your Head
Every leader carries rules in their head. Some are tiny: which vendor always needs chasing. Some are big: which client never accepts late deliveries.
In the early days, this works. You’re close to the action. Your memory is fast and personal.
But as teams grow, those unwritten rules don’t disappear. They just turn into decision debt → a backlog of choices that live only in your head, waiting to be repaid by pauses, hesitations, and delays across the company.
At first, it feels harmless. Over time, it compounds silently, slowing down execution even when everything looks structured on the surface.
Case Study: The Factory Freeze
At “The Factory”, our composite mid-sized SME from Part 1, the pattern was everywhere.
A shipment sat in the warehouse because packaging material had been swapped. Managers paused. “The founder usually checks this. Let’s wait.”
Overtime approval held up payroll. “He knows which clients reimburse, which don’t. Safer to confirm.”
A sales proposal stalled because the final wording wasn’t clear. “He always tweaks the phrasing. Better to ask before sending.”
On the ERP, tasks looked alive. Dashboards glowed green. But the real operating system was the founder’s head. And because rules weren’t visible, work stalled until he replied.
This wasn’t incompetence. It was design. The company had normalized memory-as-system.
Why Memory Feels Safer (But Isn’t)
Leaders don’t cling to memory because they love control. They cling because it feels safer.
At The Factory, the founder admitted: “Why write it down? I can just tell them directly.”
It felt efficient:
One WhatsApp ping instead of updating an SOP.
One late-night correction instead of codifying a standard.
One quick call instead of training a team.
But memory is fragile. What feels like agility to a leader looks like hesitation to a team. They pause, wait, and default to “just checking” before acting.
That hesitation is interest on the debt.
The Hidden Cost: Cognitive Lag
Decision debt isn’t visible. But its cost is real … what we call cognitive lag.
Cognitive lag is the time lost between knowing what to do and waiting for confirmation.
At The Factory, cognitive lag added days to processes that should have taken hours. Not because people didn’t care, but because the rules were invisible. Every time they hesitated, the founder’s mental bandwidth became the limiting factor.
Multiply that across 200 people, and the company’s velocity dropped by half … without a single dashboard showing red.
Paying Down Decision Debt
Like financial debt, the only way to reduce decision debt is to pay it down deliberately. At The Factory, we started small:
Documenting one hidden client rule each week.
Making ownership visible on workflows.
Running 48-hour experiments where the founder stayed out of approvals.
Every visible rule freed the team. Every ownership tag reduced hesitation. And slowly, the founder’s headspace began to clear.
The team wasn’t more capable than before. They were just unshackled from invisible debt.
When “Just Checking” Becomes the Real Workflow
One of the funniest (and most painful) client moments I’ve seen was inside a 90-person services firm.
On paper, their workflow was perfect. CRM humming, SOPs in folders, dashboards fresh. But when we tracked one client request from start to finish, here’s what actually happened:
Executive: “Just checking if we should send the draft now.”
Manager: “Let me check with Ops first.”
Ops Lead: “Better check with Finance because the client is touchy on billing.”
Finance Head: “I’ll just check with the CEO to be safe.”
Four layers of “just checking.” No one actually decided. By the time the CEO approved, three days had passed. Add to this the hesitations about what is the right time to ask!
The irony? The rule they were all waiting on already existed in an old SOP. But nobody trusted it. They trusted the CEO’s memory more.
That’s what decision debt looks like in real life: a system that looks sophisticated but actually runs on whispers of reassurance.
And the debt isn’t measured in money. It’s measured in speed lost, energy drained, and teams trained to equate caution with progress.
If you’ve ever found yourself in a meeting where 20 minutes of updates end with, “Let’s just check with boss,” … congratulations. You’re not running a system. You’re running a chain of polite IOUs.
Key Concepts
Decision Debt
Risk that accumulates when rules and approvals live only in memory instead of process.
Example: At The Factory, a client’s “no Friday delivery” rule was known only to the founder. Every shipment hesitated, waiting for his nod. The pause was invisible debt interest.
Memory-as-System
A fragile operating design where leader memory substitutes for documented structure.
Example: Payroll approvals stalled because only the founder knew which clients were less fussy approving overtime. No system captured it. The process existed only in his head.
Cognitive Lag
The delay created when teams hesitate for confirmation because rules aren’t visible.
Example: Proposals sat unsent for two days, even though managers knew what to do. They paused for reassurance. That lost time was lag … the true cost of invisible rules.
FAQs
Q1: What exactly is “decision debt”?
It’s the compounding backlog of choices stored in leader memory instead of systems. Like financial debt, it feels harmless at first … but interest builds in the form of delays and dependency.
Example: A founder who remembers vendor exceptions instead of documenting them. Each approval stalls until he replies. That backlog is debt.
Q2: How does decision debt show up in daily operations?
It appears as hesitation, not breakdowns.
Approvals stretched from hours to days.
Repeated clarifications on the same rule.
Polite “just checking” pauses before moving.
On the surface, dashboards look fine. But the hidden drag is everywhere.
Q3: Isn’t it faster to just remember things than to document them?
In the short run, yes. At scale, no. Memory feels faster but creates fragility.
Documentation feels slower but builds resilience.
Example: One leader insisted on remembering which SKUs needed special handling. For a while, it saved time. Then he went offline for 72 hours … and three shipments stalled. The debt came due.
Q4: How can I test if memory is running my system?
Step away. If everyday work pauses until you return, your memory is the system.
Example: At The Factory, the founder left for a weekend. Overtime approvals and proposals froze. That test exposed where memory was still running operations.
Final Reflection
Decision debt doesn’t announce itself. It whispers. In small pauses, polite hesitations, and endless “just checking” messages.
But whispers add up. They create drag that slows whole organizations.
Leaders often think they’re protecting their teams by holding rules in memory. In reality, they’re making them dependent. What feels like care is actually debt.
The real shift isn’t about working harder. It’s about designing systems that carry the rules so people don’t have to wait.
Because the longer decisions live in your head, the heavier the debt becomes. And the slower your company will move.
This article first appeared as part of Rashmi Kulkarni’s weekly column in The Perfect Voice newspaper.
Read more deep-dive insights at www.ppsconsulting.biz/blog.
(Rashmi Kulkarni is Co-founder at PPS Consulting. She helps teams build execution systems that turn care into clarity and debt into velocity. Write to rashmi@ppsconsulting.biz today.)
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