The executive leadership team is too indecisive, constantly second guessing their own decisions and having everyone scramble to justify moving forward in one way or another. They are highly opinion driven (a HIPPO culture), ignoring or dismissing most real data presented to them, and forcing teams to work backwards in order to use whatever data they can to justify leadership’s opinion (which changes week to week). Because of their indecision, they also micro manage product development to death (i.e., death by a thousand paper cuts) with dozens of meetings required to make simple product decisions. The ELT is so afraid to fail, the fear permeates through the entire organization with VP-level people afraid to make decisions without the blessing of the CEO. This environment ultimately leads to all decisions taking months, all work slowing down to a snails pace, and teams struggling to balance moving product development forward while bracing against the constant indecision/pivots from above.