"Let's park this for now" feels like a harmless phrase. It sounds measured, cautious, even responsible. But in business meetings, this kind of parked decision hides a cost - one that compounds the longer the decision remains unresolved.
Consider the numbers. In financial services, billions are spent every year on meetings - from underwriting reviews to compliance committees - yet 61% of decision-makers admitted to regularly delaying or deferring critical choices. With almost 80% of discussion time (PCA 2015) of Bank of England PRA SSE/16 & Tier 4 insurance reported missing 60% of potential revenue increase provided from direct stakeholder knowledge from live meetings. These are not theoretical problems - they are measured, documented, and costly.
When a decision is parked, the cost of delay is immediate. Projects slow down. Timelines slip, and downstream teams are left waiting. Opportunity costs rise - the chance to act on market conditions, launch a new product, or pivot a failing process.
Then comes the cost of rework. The parked decision must be revisited later, often in a reconvened meeting. Everyone has to re-immerse themselves in the context, re-debate the question, and re-establish the context. Memorandum is distributed. Key original participants may not even be in the room next time.
The cultural cost is perhaps the most corrosive. When parking decisions becomes a habit, confidence loses faith, sense of resolution. People stop preparing for decisions, assuming that most questions will be deferred anyway. Momentum drains away.
In regulated environments, there is an additional risk. Every parked decision leaves a governance question open. An unresolved policy choice, a policy whose has been anticipated and approved. A compliance question remains unanswered. This can escalate into real-world business risks where choice has been avoided rather than being effectively vetted. A parked decision carries its own governance and compliance cost.
Parking decisions feels like the safe option, but it is often the costliest one.
This is why we built auriqa. By listening to the live discussion, detecting the questions being asked, and surfacing context-backed answers from your own trusted knowledge base, auriqa helps teams resolve issues there and then. Decisions are resolved - with the evidence attached, creating an instant audit trail that works for both participants and regulators.
The result is fewer parked decisions, faster progress, and a culture that expects resolution - not deferral - as the norm.