Leadership

Leadership looked considerably tidier to me when I wasn’t running a company. From the outside, good leaders appear decisive. They have the answer, communicate it clearly and everyone moves.

In reality, I’ve found leadership involves making an uncomfortable number of decisions before you have all the information you would ideally like.

People are waiting. Money is being spent. Something isn’t working. An opportunity has appeared. Two perfectly reasonable people disagree. And eventually, somebody has to say, this is what we’re doing.

I’ve learnt that delaying a decision can feel safer because you haven’t technically chosen the wrong thing. But indecision has a cost too. Teams become uncertain and problems linger. Opportunities disappear and everyone starts creating their own interpretation of what matters.

So I’ve become less obsessed with certainty and more interested in clarity.

Which for me has meant understanding what we do and don’t know and ultimately what actually matters. It also means being willing to say, I made that call, and I’m prepared for consequences.

I think pretending every decision was secretly part of the master plan is far more dangerous, annoying and pretentious.

There are plenty of frameworks for leadership, but sometimes leadership is simply having enough information to make a reasonable decision, making it, communicating it clearly and taking responsibility for what happens next.

Leadership is having enough clarity to make the call, enough conviction to move people forward and enough accountability to own what happens next.