“Nothing is more difficult, and therefore more precious, than to be able to decide.”
– Napoleon Bonaparte
"Of course I make good decisions!"
That was me.
Twenty years of unflinching belief.
To my colleagues, it bordered on arrogance. To me, it was everything I thought leadership decision-making should appear to be. Bold and decisive, calm and authoritative.
But what I felt never matched what the room saw.
When the pressure was on, I'd melt. When I made Lee redundant, I replayed the decision a thousand times. When I wanted to make a big price change, rather than go against my team, I'd bury my head in a spreadsheet.
But those actions never felt right.
But why would they?
I was never rewarded for well-made decisions. In my first manager's job, peeling a gold star sticker off the sheet and placing it on the monthly tracker was the only measure that mattered. It was the outcome that counted, not the process.
The one thing you can't control, only influence, sets out your future. As decision-makers, we are in the business of uncertainty. And it's here that most leaders make their decision-making mistakes. They invest in outcomes, not process.
You can see this even in senior leaders.
Brian Chesky grew Airbnb to 7,000 employees, and then the pandemic struck. This unexpected event led to an 80% decline in sales almost overnight. He saved the business by focusing on his decision-making process.
Outcomes are never certain. Uncertainty is the only certainty.
I started this quest for decision mastery after one bad decision too many.
My first lesson was that a decision and its outcome are not one. A decision influences an outcome. It doesn't define it.
Too many of my promotions weren't due to my decisions.
Circumstances beyond my control brought me to the attention of the district manager. Much later, a change in strategy gave me a chance to run a new business team. Yes, I had made decisions to position myself — but I never planned them.
These were good outcomes, but they weren't as a result of my decision-making.
How you decide matters more than what you decide.
Deep down, most leaders know this to be true. When incentives stand on the backs of our outcomes, what we decide takes precedence. We strive to be right, rather than seeking to be less wrong.
Accepting you can't be right is accepting uncertainty for what it is.
Leadership decisions need a process to keep you grounded in this reality. They need frameworks built on pattern matching. This lets you live in the decision, not the outcome.
The theory was great, but the practice never took place. And it means that when the pressure rises, we'll check the spreadsheet or negotiate a peace. If only to find a way not to make a decision.
We digest the idea, but never try.
The guide gives you the thinking. This makes it real. Pick a decision and work through it — one question at a time.
The guide gives you the thinking. This makes it real. Pick a decision and work through it — one question at a time.
The fix isn't more experience — it's a better process. Experience builds pattern recognition, but it also builds blind spots. Leaders who've succeeded with a particular approach tend to over-apply it, even when the situation has changed. A decision-making process that surfaces what your experience is hiding is where improvement starts.
Track the reasoning, not the results. A good outcome from a bad process teaches you nothing. A bad outcome from a sound process teaches you everything. If you can't explain why you made a call six months later, a decision journal will show you where the gaps are.
A process is the sequence you follow every time — how you move from problem to commitment. A framework is a tool you reach for at a specific step, like weighted scoring or worst-case analysis. You need the process first. The frameworks slot in where the process demands them.
Start by separating the decision from the pressure around it. Most leaders skip this — they react to the urgency instead of the actual choice. Name the decision, classify whether it's reversible or irreversible, and give yourself the process the situation actually requires.
