Data, decision speed and mandate in organisations

In April 2026 KPMG published its Adaptability Index, a survey of executives. Sixty-three per cent say they lean more heavily on data and analytics; 43 per cent say this makes decisions faster or clearer. Fewer than a third think their organisation is set up to move fast when circumstances change, and few leaders have an agreed threshold for when to adjust course, pause or stop. Without such a threshold, KPMG writes, each new insight feeds the debate rather than the decision. Meanwhile 81 per cent say the board expects a more decisive response to disruption. The sample size is not given on the page.

BCG sees the same from the bottom up. In its fourth AI at Work survey of almost 12,000 employees, managers and leaders, 41 per cent say AI has increased the time they spend on decisions. Seven in ten see simple tasks disappearing and six in ten find that the bar for “good enough” has been raised. Half say their organisation has no clear agreements on who is in charge in teams of people and AI. More information per decision, the same decision-making structure.

Capgemini Research Institute surveyed the top itself and hears a different story there from the one BCG hears on the front line. Of 500 executives at companies with revenue of more than ten billion, surveyed in late summer 2025, more than half say AI makes their strategic decisions faster and cheaper. One in six actively uses AI for this, and 1 per cent expect AI to take a strategic decision on its own within three years. Two thirds say clear agreements on governance and accountability would help them use AI more often in decisions. So at the top, too, the question of who may decide comes before the next tool.

McKinsey supplies the long series. In 2019 the firm asked executives about their decision-making: on average they spent 37 per cent of their working time on decisions, 61 per cent said most of that time was poorly used and 48 per cent thought their own organisation decided quickly. Fast decisions were twice as likely to be good decisions, and organisations with fewer reporting layers scored better on both. Seven years later, The State of Organizations 2026, a survey of more than ten thousand senior executives, says economic and geopolitical disruption is driving complexity further up, and that the productivity gains lie in simplifying processes rather than in redrawing the organisation chart.

McKinsey reached a similar diagnosis back in 2019; what has mainly grown since then is the amount of data available. KPMG names decision rights, escalation thresholds and the number of approval layers as the factors that make the difference.

The same pattern is on the table in the car industry. In KPMG’s June 2026 survey of 775 executives in the sector, almost four in ten cite slow decision-making and governance, and KPMG identifies these as the biggest internal obstacle to strategy. Of the digital capabilities KPMG measures, AI and data-driven decision-making in the supply chain and operations scores lowest: 37 per cent describe it as established or embedded. KPMG recommends simplifying approval layers before a new change programme begins.

How solid is this? Three independent firms find the same pattern in a single year, and McKinsey has a 2019 benchmark to measure against. KPMG does not give its sample size on the page and the 2026 figures do not yet have a second year of measurement, so the picture is not yet settled.