You know exactly what I’m talking about.
You opened Teams this morning. Twelve unread channels. Forty-seven messages across six group chats. A thread that started as “quick question about the invoice template” has devolved into a philosophical debate about brand consistency, font choices, and whether the company should switch to metric measurements.
The invoice still hasn’t gone out.
Welcome to death by committee, where good ideas go to die in a swamp of opinions, reply-alls, and “just one more thought” messages from people who weren’t even supposed to be in the conversation.
If you’re running a business in Phoenix and wondering why your team moves at the speed of molasses despite having “great communication tools,” this is your problem. And it’s costing you way more than you realize.
The Cookie Jar Has Too Many Hands In It
Here’s what I see constantly when working with small and mid-size businesses across Arizona: everyone wants to weigh in. Everyone has an opinion. And somehow, everyone ends up in every conversation.
Marketing is in the operations channel. Operations is second-guessing sales. Sales is critiquing the website copy. The receptionist is providing feedback on the CRM workflow.
Nobody is wrong for having thoughts. But when every single decision requires input from twelve people, none of whom actually own the outcome, you get:
- Delayed initiatives and missed opportunities because nothing gets approved
- Watered-down decisions because you’re trying to please everyone
- Zero accountability because if everyone decides, no one decides
- Exhausted employees who spend more time in chat than doing actual work
This isn’t collaboration. This is chaos wearing a collaboration costume.
The Ownership Problem: Opinions vs. Authority
Let me be blunt: there’s a massive difference between having an opinion and having authority.
Opinions are free. Everyone’s got one. Your cousin has opinions about your business. Your barber has opinions. The guy at the coffee shop has opinions.
Authority means you’re responsible for the outcome. You make the call. You live with the consequences.
The problem with most Teams channels and group chats? They’re structured around opinions, not authority.
When you create a channel called “Website Redesign” and add fifteen people, you’ve just told fifteen people their input matters equally. Now you’ve got the marketing manager, two salespeople, the owner’s nephew who “knows computers,” and someone from accounting who “just wants to make sure the colors match the brand guidelines” all throwing in feedback.
Who actually owns the website redesign? Who makes the final call when there’s disagreement?
If you can’t answer that question in three seconds, you’ve got a committee problem.
Teams Running in Circles (I’ve Seen This in Companies of All Sizes)
This isn’t just a small business issue. I’ve watched larger organizations with sophisticated tech stacks completely grind to a halt because of this exact dynamic.
Here’s the pattern:
- Someone proposes an idea
- Five people have “concerns” or “suggestions”
- The idea gets modified to address those concerns
- Three different people now have new concerns about the modifications
- Someone suggests “maybe we should schedule a meeting to discuss”
- The meeting happens. More opinions emerge.
- A follow-up meeting is scheduled
- The original idea is now unrecognizable, or dead entirely
- Three months later, nothing has shipped
Sound familiar?
The worst part? The people providing all that feedback genuinely believe they’re helping. They’re not trying to sabotage anything. They’re just… participating. Because that’s what the communication structure invited them to do.
The Structure Problem: Not Everything Needs to Be Scoped
Here’s the other side of this coin, and it’s equally destructive:
Some businesses respond to chaos by over-structuring everything. Every task becomes a “project.” Every decision requires a “discovery phase.” Every minor change needs to be “scoped out” before anyone can touch it.
This is just committee thinking wearing a process costume.
You’ve got to have the judgment to know the difference between:
- “Let’s just get this done” , Someone with authority makes a call, executes, and moves on
- “This actually needs to be scoped” , The decision has significant cost, risk, or cross-functional impact
Changing the footer on your website? Just do it. Rebuilding your entire client onboarding process? Yeah, that needs some planning.
But here’s what happens in businesses without clear ownership: everything gets treated like it needs committee approval because no one feels empowered to just make a decision.
So the footer change sits in a queue for three weeks while someone “gathers stakeholder input.”
Meanwhile, your competitor: who has clear ownership and isn’t drowning in group chats: already shipped ten improvements.
What This Actually Costs Phoenix Businesses
Let’s talk money, because that’s what this really comes down to.
If your team of ten people spends an average of 45 minutes per day navigating unnecessary channel conversations, opinion debates, and “circling back” on decisions that should’ve been made days ago:
- That’s 7.5 hours per day of collective time
- 37.5 hours per week
- 1,950 hours per year
- At $50/hour loaded cost: $97,500 per year in friction
That’s not even counting the opportunity cost of delayed projects, missed market windows, and employee burnout from feeling like nothing ever gets done.
For a lot of the businesses we support with managed IT services in Phoenix, cleaning up communication chaos is one of the highest-ROI improvements we help implement. Not because we’re installing fancy software: but because we help establish structure around who owns what and who gets to weigh in.
How to Fix This (Without Burning Everything Down)
You don’t need to ban Teams or go back to carrier pigeons. You need ownership and boundaries.
1. Every Channel Needs an Owner
Not a “moderator.” An owner. Someone who:
- Decides what gets discussed there
- Makes final calls when there’s disagreement
- Is accountable for outcomes
- Can remove people who don’t need to be there
If a channel doesn’t have a clear owner, delete it or merge it into one that does.
2. Default to Smaller Groups
The research is clear: smaller groups make better, faster decisions. When you’re setting up a conversation about a decision, ask yourself: who actually needs to be here?
The answer is almost never “everyone who might have an opinion.”
3. Separate “Input” from “Decision”
Create explicit phases. “We’re gathering input until Friday. Then Sarah makes the call on Monday. Done.”
This lets people contribute without creating the expectation that every opinion will be incorporated.
4. Give People Permission to Just Do Things
Empower your team to make decisions within their domain without running it up the flagpole. Define the boundaries clearly: “You can approve expenses under $500 without asking”: and then get out of their way.
5. Audit Your Channels Quarterly
Look at every Teams channel, Slack workspace, and group chat. Ask:
- Who owns this?
- What decisions get made here?
- Does everyone in here need to be here?
If you can’t answer those questions clearly, consolidate or kill it.
The Bottom Line
Your communication tools aren’t the problem. Microsoft Teams isn’t evil. Group chats aren’t inherently bad.
The problem is how you’re using them: and specifically, whether you’ve established clear ownership over decisions or created a free-for-all where everyone’s opinion carries equal weight.
Death by committee is preventable. But it requires someone to actually step up and say: “This is mine. I’ll take the input. I’ll make the call. And we’re moving forward.”
If your business is drowning in digital noise and you’re not sure how to untangle it, that’s exactly the kind of operational mess we help Phoenix businesses sort out. Sometimes it’s a technology problem. More often, it’s a structure problem that technology just makes more visible.
Ready to stop running in circles?
Book an intro call and let’s talk about getting your team out of the chat swamp and back to shipping work that matters.
