Companion tool · Stakeholder decision stalls

Stakeholder Decision Stall Checklist

Check whatever's true of your current engagement. This sorts what you're seeing into a Little's Law queue problem, a Kingman utilization/variability problem, or a Weinberg information-distortion problem — each one needs a different fix. See the reasoning behind each inWhy Executive Decisions Stall on Client Projects.

Little's Law · L = λW

The decision queue

Signals that you're generating decisions faster than leadership can clear them.

More than one decision is currently sitting with the client's leadership, unresolved, right now.New decisions get raised as they come up, one at a time, rather than being planned for and batched in advance.You can't say, off the top of your head, how many decisions are currently pending sign-off.The project plan treats "exec approval" as a single line item rather than a recurring, sized piece of the timeline.Multiple workstreams have gone quiet in the same week, all waiting on the same person or committee.

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Kingman's formula · Wait ≈ V·U·T

Utilization & variability

Signals that the decision-maker is running near capacity, with unpredictable arrivals or wildly uneven decision complexity.

The key decision-maker is sponsoring or serving on other initiatives at the same time as yours.Decisions arrive at unpredictable times — a vendor issue, a budget question, something out of cycle — rather than on a known cadence.Some decisions take the exec two minutes; others require them to absorb real strategic context — there's no consistency in how much each one costs them.Wait times for sign-off have been inconsistent — sometimes same-day, sometimes weeks, with no obvious pattern.You've heard some version of "they're just really busy right now" as the explanation for the delay.

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Weinberg · Context-switching & distortion

Signal integrity

Signals that the true urgency and cost of delay aren't reaching the person who can actually clear the queue.

Someone between you and the final decision-maker is softening or summarizing the ask before it gets to them.Nobody has put a number — dollars, days, or a missed date — on what the delay is actually costing.You suspect the real holdup is politics, budget ownership, or someone avoiding blame — not the substance of the decision itself.More than one person could plausibly be "the one who's supposed to decide," and none of them has clearly claimed it.The project sponsor has an incentive to make things look more on-track than they are when reporting up.

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Diagnosis

Updates live as you check items above.

Little's Law — queue0%

Kingman — utilization & variability0%

Weinberg — signal integrity0%

Check a few boxes above to see your diagnosis.

Most stalled engagements are a mix of all three — this just tells you which lever to pull first.

For the reasoning behind each of the three categories above, readWhy Executive Decisions Stall on Client Projects. For the underlying math, see8.1 Little's Law in the Full Reference, or plug real numbers into theFlow Formula Calculator. If your engagement is stuck and you want a second set of eyes on it,get in touch.