The Decision Trap That Slows Every Product Team - Above the Law

"No one agrees on which decisions are safe to move quickly and which require deliberate, documented, cross-functional judgment. The result is familiar. Product managers over-escalate. Engineers hesitate. Legal becomes the default "decider" for matters that do not truly need legal ownership. Meanwhile, genuine high-risk decisions sometimes sneak through unexamined because the team is exhausted from treating every choice with the same level of scrutiny. When everything feels irreversible, nothing moves with confidence."

"They rely on intuition, hierarchy, or whoever raises the loudest concern. That approach is unpredictable, energy-draining, and often risky. The Hidden Cost of Treating Every Decision the SameMost companies fall into one of two traps. The first is over-caution. Teams slow down because they think every decision might create legal or compliance exposure. This creates unnecessary escalations that clog workflow. The second is false confidence. Teams race forward with decisions that seem simple but involve commitments, dependencies, or user impact that are difficult to unwind."

In-house product counsel spend substantial time untangling slow decisions because teams lack a clear framework for which choices are reversible versus irreversible. When teams treat every decision as irreversible, product managers over-escalate, engineers hesitate, and legal becomes the default decider for low-risk matters while some genuine high-risk choices slip through. AI, automation, rapid shipping, and integrated systems increase uncertainty and heighten the need for clarity. The reversible-irreversible distinction provides a simple lens to allocate scrutiny appropriately, but most organizations rely on intuition or hierarchy instead. Companies commonly fall into over-caution or false confidence without formal decision rules.

Read at Above the Law