You Expect Good Decisions. Are You Giving People the Conditions to Make Them?

You Expect Good Decisions. Are You Giving People the Conditions to Make Them?

A leadership team is preparing to make a decision that could shape the organisation for years to come. The business case has been thoroughly developed, risks have been analysed, and several alternatives have been considered. Some of those involved have spent evenings and weekends preparing. Others have slept poorly throughout the week, yet they arrive at the meeting looking confident, engaged and ready to contribute. Nobody questions whether they are actually in the best condition to evaluate the information in front of them. The organisation has invested considerable resources in ensuring the quality of the decision-making process, but almost no attention has been given to the condition of the people responsible for making the decision. We place high expectations on competence, experience, judgment and performance, while many organisations maintain working cultures in which long hours, constant availability and limited recovery are treated as normal requirements for success. Sleep is generally considered a personal responsibility, something employees and leaders are expected to manage outside working hours. But what happens when the way we organise and lead work makes it difficult for people to get the recovery they need? And how confident should we really be in our decisions if the people making them are not operating under the conditions that allow them to perform at their best?

Sleep deprivation affects more than how tired you feel

Research into sleep and cognitive functioning has long established that insufficient sleep can affect attention, concentration, memory and reaction time. More recent research has helped clarify how sleep loss influences the complex mental processes involved in planning, regulating behaviour, processing information and adapting to changing circumstances. A meta-analysis published in Sleep Medicine Reviews in 2025 examined 79 scientific publications on sleep loss and executive functioning. The researchers identified impairments across several important cognitive functions, although the effects varied depending on the task and how performance was measured. These findings are particularly relevant to leadership because leaders are rarely required simply to remember information or respond quickly. Their responsibilities involve evaluating conflicting perspectives, interpreting incomplete information, anticipating consequences, managing uncertainty and choosing between alternatives where the right answer is far from obvious. A separate research review published in Behavioral Sciences in 2025 examined 25 studies involving 2,276 participants and found that sleep deprivation often negatively affected decision-making, including an increased tendency towards risky decisions in several of the studies. The findings were not entirely consistent, however, and the effects depended on the nature of the task and the extent of sleep deprivation.

We should therefore avoid suggesting that everyone who sleeps poorly will automatically make poor decisions. People can maintain effective performance under demanding conditions, particularly for limited periods, and experience can help them manage difficult situations. The problem arises when organisations assume that this capacity is unlimited or overlook the fact that experience and competence do not eliminate physiological limitations. Sleep deprivation is not necessarily visible in the way that inadequate knowledge, insufficient resources or poorly designed processes might be. A leader who has slept badly may still appear confident, decisive and fully in control. They may not even recognise that their capacity has been affected. In environments where leaders are expected to withstand considerable pressure, acknowledging fatigue can be interpreted as a sign of weakness. As a result, people may continue making important decisions under conditions they would be reluctant to accept if they were assessing operational or safety risks involving someone else. There is an uncomfortable contradiction here. Organisations can be highly systematic when evaluating financial, technical and operational risks, yet pay remarkably little attention to the human capacity on which those assessments ultimately depend.

When organisational culture starts working against performance

In some professional environments, being exceptionally busy has become a measure of importance. Calendars are packed, working hours extend well into the evening, and being available almost around the clock can be interpreted as evidence of commitment and responsibility. Leaders talk about how early they started, how late they finished and how many hours they worked over the weekend. Employees who are always willing to take on another assignment are often described as particularly valuable. There is nothing inherently wrong with appreciating people who accept responsibility and make an extra effort when the organisation needs them. But we should question the assumption that working harder and working longer necessarily produce better results. It is entirely possible to spend more time working without creating proportionately more value. Beyond a certain point, additional hours may even reduce the quality of the work already being performed. This is especially relevant in knowledge-intensive organisations, where results depend heavily on concentration, analytical thinking, problem-solving, creativity and effective collaboration. It does not mean that demanding periods or extraordinary efforts should be avoided. Every organisation will experience situations where additional effort is necessary, and some professions involve significant pressure as an unavoidable part of the work. The important distinction is between mobilising additional capacity when circumstances require it and organising everyday operations as though the organisation were permanently in crisis. When exceptional demands become normal expectations, insufficient recovery can gradually become an established feature of the organisational culture.

Research published in the international journal Safety Science in 2026 provides an interesting perspective on this relationship. Researchers followed 944 child welfare employees in Norway across three surveys conducted at six-month intervals. They examined whether employees' perceptions of management's commitment to psychological health and safety were associated with their ability to mentally disconnect from work and their subsequent sleep problems. The findings suggested that employees who perceived stronger management commitment to psychological health and safety were better able to detach psychologically from their work. Greater psychological detachment was subsequently associated with fewer symptoms of insomnia. The study does not establish that leaders can directly determine how well their employees sleep, nor does it demonstrate that these relationships operate identically across all professions and countries. It does, however, provide evidence that organisational conditions and management priorities may influence employees' ability to recover outside working hours. This is a significant consideration for organisations that invest in stress management courses, employee wellbeing programmes and initiatives promoting work-life balance while simultaneously maintaining workloads, expectations and communication practices that make meaningful recovery difficult.

Consider a manager who regularly sends emails late in the evening. The manager may genuinely have no expectation that employees will respond until the following morning. Yet if employees repeatedly observe that those who respond immediately receive recognition, greater responsibility or better career opportunities, an informal expectation can develop without ever being explicitly communicated. Leadership is not defined solely by the instructions we give. It is also shaped by what we reward, what we tolerate and the behaviours we demonstrate ourselves. An organisation can promote healthy working practices in its official policies while reinforcing entirely different expectations through its everyday culture. This raises a difficult question: Are some organisations trying to solve problems created by excessive workloads by teaching employees to become more resilient, when they should also be examining whether those workloads are reasonably organised in the first place?

An article published in Harvard Business Review in October 2026 explored precisely this challenge. Drawing on a survey of 1,009 managers and executives in the United States, sleep neuroscientist Els van der Helm reported that 39% of respondents experienced insufficient sleep on at least four nights per week. The research also highlighted how many leaders underestimate the effects of sleep deprivation on their professional performance and how organisational expectations can encourage people to conceal their fatigue. The findings come from self-reported survey data and should not be treated as proof that specific leadership practices directly cause poor decisions. Nevertheless, the broader argument deserves attention. A culture that celebrates long hours and constant availability may unintentionally encourage employees to demonstrate commitment through visible sacrifice rather than sustainable performance. What appears to be a strong performance culture may therefore be reinforcing behaviours that undermine the very capabilities on which long-term performance depends.

Sleep and recovery are also more than individual concerns. The effects of fatigue can extend into relationships, communication and teamwork. A study published in the journal Sleep examined how prolonged wakefulness affected team performance and cohesion. In a controlled laboratory setting, 22 participants remained awake for up to 62 hours while completing collaborative tasks. The researchers observed deterioration in aspects of team performance and cooperation. This represents a much more extreme form of sleep deprivation than most people experience during an ordinary working week, so the results should not be transferred directly to a management team whose members have experienced a few nights of poor sleep. Nevertheless, the study illustrates that fatigue can have consequences beyond individual task performance. This is particularly relevant in environments where people must coordinate under pressure, respond to unexpected events or make decisions with significant consequences. In safety-critical operations, healthcare, emergency preparedness and security, the risks associated with fatigue have long been recognised. But there is little reason to assume that human physiological limitations suddenly disappear when people move from an operational environment into a boardroom, a project team or a corporate leadership meeting. The consequences of mistakes may differ, but the quality of decisions and collaboration still depends on the people doing the work.

Resilience also means understanding our limitations

At TEAM NORSO, our work with resilience focuses on the ability of individuals, teams and organisations to manage demanding situations, adapt to challenges and maintain effective performance over time. Resilience does not mean being unaffected by pressure, nor does it mean tolerating ever-increasing demands without considering their consequences. A leader who consistently works the longest hours is not necessarily the most resilient. Neither is the employee who never declines an assignment or continues delivering results despite an unreasonable workload. Such individuals may be extremely valuable in the short term, but both they and their organisations may eventually pay a considerable price. There is also a risk that organisations become dependent on extraordinary efforts from a relatively small number of people. When results consistently depend on employees working beyond sustainable limits, this is not necessarily evidence of organisational strength. It may reveal weaknesses in capacity planning, prioritisation, staffing or operational processes. A resilient organisation should be capable of responding to difficult situations without permanently depending on individuals to compensate for structural weaknesses. This does not require lowering ambitions or accepting poorer results. On the contrary, organisations with high ambitions should be particularly concerned with creating the conditions that allow strong performance to be sustained. Sometimes this means making more difficult choices about priorities, removing unnecessary activity, distributing responsibilities differently or providing sufficient capacity for recovery between demanding periods. Recognising human limitations is not a weakness in leadership. It can be a prerequisite for organising work more effectively.

There is another aspect of this problem that deserves greater attention. Employees who are particularly capable of handling pressure often receive increasingly demanding assignments precisely because their managers trust them to deliver. In some situations, that is entirely reasonable. But when it becomes the organisation's default response, it can gradually create a dependency on its most capable people. Those who perform well under pressure are effectively rewarded with additional pressure, while the need to develop broader capacity across the organisation receives less attention. Over time, the organisation may become more vulnerable even as its most productive employees continue to deliver impressive results. A leader should therefore be interested not only in what employees are capable of producing today, but also in whether the way they work allows them to perform effectively tomorrow. High levels of effort can be both necessary and valuable, but effort alone is not a reliable measure of organisational effectiveness.

This distinction matters when we discuss leadership development and organisational resilience. It is tempting to focus primarily on strengthening individuals so that they become better equipped to handle increasingly difficult circumstances. Developing personal resilience, confidence and the ability to perform under pressure certainly has value. But individual capabilities cannot be considered independently of the environment in which they are exercised. An organisation that continually creates avoidable pressure and then expects employees to become better at coping with it may be addressing the symptoms rather than the underlying problem. Real organisational resilience involves developing people while also improving the structures, processes and leadership practices that influence their ability to perform.

What should leaders do differently?

It is neither realistic nor appropriate for employers to monitor how many hours their employees sleep. Sleep is influenced by many factors outside the workplace, including family circumstances, health, personal responsibilities and individual differences. Employers cannot and should not assume responsibility for every aspect of an employee's wellbeing. Their responsibility is to provide appropriate working conditions and to manage the organisational factors they can reasonably influence. In some businesses, this involves examining working hours, shift patterns, travel requirements and workloads during particularly demanding periods. In others, it may involve reconsidering priorities, expectations of availability, excessive meetings or the ability to complete intellectually demanding tasks without constant interruption. It can also involve recognising when employees have been carrying excessive responsibilities for too long or when an organisation lacks the capacity to respond to unexpected demands without repeatedly relying on the same individuals to compensate.

One useful starting point is to examine what the organisation actually rewards. Is recognition based on good results, sound judgment and effective collaboration, or on visible effort and constant availability? Is the leader who delegates effectively, makes disciplined priorities and creates sustainable results valued as highly as the leader who is always online and personally involved in everything? Are employees genuinely able to disconnect when their working day ends, or do informal expectations make that difficult? These questions may reveal more about the organisation's performance culture than another employee wellbeing survey. Individual interventions, such as stress management training or education about healthy sleep habits, can certainly be useful. But they are unlikely to resolve problems arising from unrealistic workloads or leadership practices that systematically prevent recovery. If the organisation itself contributes to unnecessary strain, asking employees to become better at managing the consequences will only achieve so much.

Organisations invest substantial resources in leadership development, professional competence, decision-support systems, quality management and increasingly artificial intelligence because they want better decisions and stronger results. These investments can be valuable, but even the most sophisticated systems depend on people who are capable of using them effectively. Knowledge must be translated into judgment, judgment into decisions, and decisions into action. If we overlook the basic conditions that influence human performance, we risk reducing the value of the investments we make elsewhere. Sleep and recovery do not necessarily need to become standing agenda items in every leadership meeting. What matters is whether leaders understand how workload, expectations and organisational culture can influence the people responsible for delivering the results.

Perhaps we should therefore ask a different question the next time we discuss how to improve performance. Instead of focusing exclusively on what more we can expect from our employees, we should also examine what leaders must do to create the conditions in which people can perform well.

Because if we expect people to make good decisions, we must also take responsibility for the conditions in which those decisions are made.

References and further reading

Borge, R. H., Finne, L. B., Parveen, S. & Nielsen, M. B. (2026). Management priority to psychological health and safety, psychological detachment, and insomnia: A three-wave longitudinal study. Safety Science, 196, 107076. Read the research article.

Cao, Y., Xie, T. & Ma, N. (2025). The impairments of sleep loss on core executive functions: General and task-specific effects. Sleep Medicine Reviews, 84, 102163. Read the research summary.

Agyapong-Opoku, F. et al. (2025). Examining the Effects of Sleep Deprivation on Decision-Making: A Scoping Review. Behavioral Sciences, 15(6), 823. Read the study.

Greer, E. et al. (2026). Sleep deprivation impairs team performance and cohesion. Sleep. Read the research summary.

Van der Helm, E. (2026). Research: Sleep Deprivation Is a Leadership Problem. Harvard Business Review, October 6, 2026. Read the article.

English editorial adaptation of the Norwegian original.