Who Is Actually Making This Decision?

One of the more instructive stories I’ve seen recently wasn’t about politics. It was about decision making.

Several organizations have found themselves paying significant settlements after terminating employees in the middle of highly public controversies. Whether those decisions were legally justified or not is for the courts. The more interesting question is what happened inside the organization before those decisions were made.

Most organizations have well developed systems for handling high risk events.

• A data breach triggers an incident response plan.
• A workplace injury follows established safety protocols.
• A harassment complaint leads to an investigation.

But public outrage is different. Too often, it becomes a race against the next news cycle and that strikes me as a systems problem.

In electrical systems, a circuit breaker exists to interrupt the flow before damage occurs. Organizations need something similar when public pressure suddenly spikes. Not to prevent accountability. To protect judgment.

When emotions are high, the organization should become more disciplined, not less. Communications should manage the public response. HR should review the employment issues. Legal should assess risk. Leadership should ask whether the decision is consistent with policy, precedent, and the organization’s own values.

One question is worth asking before any irreversible decision is made: Would we make the same decision if nobody outside the organization knew about it?

If the answer is yes, proceed.

If the answer is no, the problem may not be the employee. It may be that the organization has temporarily outsourced its decision making to public opinion.

The settlement, if one comes later, isn’t the real cost. It’s just the part that appears on a balance sheet.

The real cost is harder to measure. Employees lose confidence that decisions are made consistently. Managers become uncertain about whether policy or public pressure governs the workplace. Leadership’s attention gets distracted from other priorities. HR shifts from being an advisor to being a crisis manager. Trust in the system erodes.

Organizations spend years building governance structures so that important decisions are made deliberately rather than emotionally. Those systems matter most when emotion is highest.

A circuit breaker that only works when the current is low isn’t a circuit breaker. It’s decoration.