The New CEO Metric Is Decision Latency
In this commentary, Darren Goonawardana argues that traditional CEO performance metrics—headcount growth, revenue per employee, and AI adoption—miss the critical factor of how quickly a company can turn high‑quality signals into actions. He defines "decision latency" as the time from a customer, competitor, model, or risk signal to the execution of a decision, emphasizing that AI does not automatically speed up organizations; instead, it highlights existing bottlenecks such as excessive meetings, handoffs, unclear authority, and looping processes. Goonawardana urges CEOs to redesign their operating systems so decisions are pushed closer to the edge, with clear ownership, sufficient context, and rapid escalation paths. He proposes that CEOs should identify the most important decisions, assign clear owners, ensure the needed context is available, and measure the elapsed time from signal to action as the primary executive metric in the AI era.
