Why high-growth companies should build decision cultures

At the Exceptional Women Alliance, we help senior women leaders mentor one another through shared insight. As founder, chair, and CEO, I speak with executives shaping how organizations evolve and perform. This month, I spoke with Jennifer Renaud, CEO of Kradle LLC and a board director with more than 30 years experience in digital innovation, commercial strategy, and customer-centered growth. She has guided companies through operating model transformation and post-integration growth. As artificial intelligence becomes embedded across organizations, Renaud believes companies must rethink how decisions are made. Traditional hierarchies, designed for stability and control, often slow organizations when speed and adaptability matter most. Here are highlights from our discussion. Q: How are traditional decision hierarchies becoming less effective? Jennifer Renaud: Hierarchies were built for predictability. They worked when markets moved slowly and information traveled through limited channels. Today, customer expectations shift quickly, competitive advantages disappear faster, and organizations are expected to respond almost immediately. Many companies still assume better decisions come from additional layers of approval. In reality, too many approvals often create delays. When decision authority sits too high in the organization, teams wait for alignment while customer and market signals lose relevance. Organizations rarely fail because of one bad decision. More often, they struggle because they make too few decisions to keep pace with change. Leaders are increasingly recognizing that decision quality improves when authority sits closer to the insight itself. The people closest to customers, products, and operations often understand emerging tradeoffs best. Q: How can companies move faster without losing alignment? Renaud: I think about this through the lens of decision proximity—how close decision authority sits to the information needed to make a strong decision. When