For leaders, traditionally the focus has been to promote the skills of analysis, optimisation, decision making, agility, specialised expertise.  So, the pillars of most leadership programmes centred on organisational strategy, data and risk management, proven processes and effective frameworks. Now, the expectation for leaders is to decide without knowing everything, to operate across unknown topics, to hold complexity and consequences amid a lack of clarity or known knowns. 

So, we compensate. We add more structure. More reporting. More processes. And yet, when it really matters, something still cracks. Because leadership, in those moments, is not conceptual or theory based.  It is integrative: relying on your experience and those of your executive team, being comfortable with the uncomfortable, driving alignment, value and direction while not knowing all the factors involved.

I’ve been rereading Bill Canady’s From Panic to Profit recently and so many of his observations resonate with what I hear from my clients.  Leaders don’t need to do more. They need to make sharper trade-offs, reduce noise from the 80/20 ratio where 20% of your effort is critical to your success as a leader and create new plans based on real time data.  If any of this rings a bell for you and the challenges you and your team face, I’d highly recommend a dip into this clear and focused book.