The Deciding in the Dark report draws on insights from 200 senior retail supply chain leaders from across the UK and US, revealing that more than four in five significant strategic decisions encounter issues during delivery. 

It reveals a growing gap between the scale of decisions being made and the ability to evaluate their impact across the full supply chain.

Nearly nine in ten leaders expect to deliver at least one step-change decision in the next 12 months, spanning areas such as network redesign, automation, and service transformation. 

However, many are doing so without clarity or confidence in how those decisions will play out across interconnected operations.

As supply chains become more interconnected and interdependent, the ability to understand how decisions will perform across the full system is becoming more difficult.

Supply chain transformations rarely fail in a clean, obvious way

Mark Simpson, former chief supply chain officer, ASDA, said: “The sorts of decisions involved in supply chain transformations rarely fail in a clean, obvious way. What I’ve seen is that the impact shows up somewhere else in the business, often only after you’ve already committed.

“The challenge is moving the business forward, without creating unintended consequences you couldn’t see at the point of decision. And in many organisations, that comes back to how those decisions are evaluated. The approaches haven’t kept pace with the complexity of the systems they’re trying to change.”

Leaders are often forced to choose between a simplified strategic view or a detailed operational view in isolation, with no practical way to evaluate both together:

• 5% say they are unable to evaluate decisions both end-to-end and in operational reality.
• 92% report unintended performance trade-offs emerging elsewhere in the system following major decisions.

This lack of system-wide visibility is contributing directly to underperformance. Fewer than one in five major decisions achieve their original objectives, with many requiring significant rework, being scaled back, or reversed entirely.

Despite this, organisations are struggling to build cumulative insight from past decisions, with most models not reused across initiatives – limiting learning and reinforcing reliance on assumptions rather than evidence.

Leaders also reported that decisions can take up to 18 months with 74% admitting that slow decision-making reduces willingness to pursue bold change.

Pressure on people

Reputational pressure is significantly shaping how decisions are made. Leaders are increasingly required to sponsor multi-million-pound investments and defend outcomes at board level, often without the evidence needed to demonstrate how those decisions will perform in practice.

90% of leaders report concerns about reputational risk and this is having a direct impact on progress, as 60% rank personal or reputational risk itself among the top barriers to making major decisions.

Ross Eggleton, former group director, logistics, supply chain & technology, Morrisons, said: “As a retail supply chain leader, you’re often being asked to make and defend high-stakes decisions without a clear view of how they’ll actually play out in practice.

“That creates real pressure. It shows up in how decisions get made – or don’t. You see decisions slowed down, softened, or avoided altogether, even when more fundamental change is clearly needed.”

Decision environment

The findings point to the need for more integrated approaches to decision-making — enabling leaders to test decisions in a realistic, system-wide context before implementation.

Jonathan Barrett, CEO, Kallikor, said:  “Supply chain leaders are being asked to make decisions of a different order to what came before, but the tools available to them have not kept pace. They were built for a simpler, more stable operating environment. 

“Leaders are being underserved by what exists, and our research shows the consequences of that gap are significant. Fewer than one in five major decisions are delivered as intended. That is not a leadership problem. It is a decision environment problem, and it is one that is entirely solvable.”

As supply chain complexity continues to increase, the ability to make major strategic decisions with confidence and a clear system-wide view is set to become a key differentiator for retailers.