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Indecision passes for diligence because it is busy. You commission more analysis, collect another opinion and book another review, and each step feels like progress towards a choice. None of them ends with one, so the cost of the current position keeps running.
Part of the pull is anticipated regret. Research on decision avoidance lists it alongside cost-benefit calculations and how hard the options are to choose between, and it explains why waiting feels safe: nobody can fault a decision you have not yet made. The current arrangement carries its own risk, and nobody is counting it.
Your team reads it quickly. A hard call that stays open teaches them to stop pushing and wait you out, while the problem the decision was meant to fix carries on.
Inverting the question gives you a way out. Ask what the current set-up is costing you each week it stays in place, and set that figure next to the risk you are worried about. If the weekly cost is the larger of the two, the delay is the riskier choice.
The practical tell is the agenda. A decision that appears meeting after meeting with no new fact attached is being parked in plain sight.
James let a failing hire run on until the end of his probation because three questions held him still. Three months after Steve joined, his sales were 20% down and the spark James had seen at interview had gone, and James kept asking whether coaching could fix it, how ending Steve's probation would reflect on his own judgment, and how long a replacement would take. The coaching session only surfaced the flaws he had already seen, and he was still dithering as the six-month probation drew to a close when I asked him two questions: "What has to change for Steve to be the right person for the job?" and "Can he deliver those?" My questions acted as a reality check: James saw the only way forward was to end Steve's time with the company, and he did it when the probation was up.