When senior decisions start to drift, the instinct is usually to add more input.

More analysis. More perspectives. More reassurance.

It feels responsible. It often isn’t.

Advice Multiplies When Ownership Weakens

As decisions rise in consequence, responsibility concentrates.

At the same time, the number of voices involved often increases.

The result is a familiar pattern.

Advice becomes safer.

Positions become qualified.

Language becomes careful.

What looks like rigour is often a quiet avoidance of ownership.

In these conditions, advice is rarely designed to help a decision land.

It is designed to be defensible.

Consensus Is Not Neutral

Consensus is often mistaken for alignment.

In reality, it can dilute responsibility while preserving appearances.

Each additional voice slightly reduces individual exposure.

The decision becomes shared in theory, but owned by no one in practice.

This is not a failure of intent. It is a structural effect.

The more consequential the decision, the greater the incentive to soften it.

Volume Creates Distance From the Decision

Modern organisations are well supplied with information and opinion.

Technology and AI have made it easier to generate answers quickly and endlessly.

What they do not provide is judgement.

Volume creates distance.

It allows decision-makers to remain adjacent to a decision rather than fully inside it.

Delay becomes easier to justify.

Alternatives multiply. Resolution slips.

At a certain point, more advice actively degrades decision quality.

Judgement Requires Fewer Voices, Not More

When a decision cannot be delegated, deferred, or safely socialised, clarity does not come from expansion.

It comes from constraint.

Clear roles.

Trusted advisors.

Deliberate reduction of noise.

Judgement improves when the environment is designed to support it.

A Final Observation

Most organisations are not short of advice.

What they lack is a disciplined way of deciding when advice has done its job and when judgement must take over.

That transition point matters more than most people realise.