I have been sitting across from many leaders lately. Different industries. Different companies. Different problems.
One is wrestling with pricing in a market that won’t hold still. Another weighing whether to sell the business he spent twenty years building. Yet another wonders if the person he’s grooming to take his seat is actually ready or if he is ready to let go.
Different rooms. Different conversations.
Same feeling underneath all of it. Am I making the right call?
That question, quiet, persistent, sometimes loud at 2 AM, is the common thread I keep hearing. And I want to say something about it that most leadership content won’t tell you.
The fog is not a sign that you’re failing.
It’s a sign that you’re leading in real conditions.
VUCA: Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, Ambiguity isn’t a buzzword anymore. It’s Tuesday. It’s your board meeting. It’s the conversation you’re avoiding with your leadership team because you don’t have a clean answer yet.
And here’s what I’ve come to believe after years of sitting in these conversations:
The most dangerous place a leader can be is standing still, waiting for the fog to lift.
It won’t lift on your timeline. It never has.
What I’ve watched the best leaders do, not the loudest ones, not the most confident-looking ones, but the ones who actually move their organizations forward, is this: They make a decision. Not always the perfect one. Sometimes not even the right one.
But they move.
Because here’s what stillness costs you that nobody talks about. It’s not just lost time or missed opportunity. It’s something more personal than that.
Stillness feels like powerlessness. And powerlessness erodes the very thing your organization needs most from you: your presence, your steadiness, your belief that you can figure this out.
Movement- even imperfect movement- does the opposite.
A decision made in the fog, even if it needs correcting later, restores momentum. It signals to your team that someone is at the wheel. It gives you information you couldn’t get from standing still. And more often than not, the correction itself leads somewhere better than the original destination would have.
I’m not telling you to be reckless. I’m telling you that in uncertainty, directional beats perfect every time.
Pick a direction. Move. Adjust. Move again.
The leaders who navigate VUCA best aren’t the ones who wait for clarity.
They’re the ones who create it by moving toward it.
If you read this and thought “that’s me” I’d love to have a conversation. Not a sales pitch. Not a discovery call with a script.
Just an honest conversation between two people who take leadership seriously.
That’s what I do.