Decision-Making: How Do You Move When You Can’t See the Whole Path?

Why decision-making means acting while the picture is still coming together. Best suited for: senior leaders, reluctant decision-makers, and anyone stuck in paralysis.

Have you noticed how everything in business is blue and green in the Western world? The colors of stability, reliability, and trustworthiness.

With all the business schools, best-selling books, and keynote prophets, you’d think we would’ve cracked the success code by now. But doing business has been and will always be a high-stakes equation with too many variables constantly shifting, most of which are beyond our control.

So you want to be a leader, or maybe you dislike your leaders and think you’d run the organization better if only you were in their shoes. Everyone has an opinion — and fair enough — but navigating uncertainty one deliberate step at a time is no walk in the park.

Imagine you’re on a long flight from Tokyo to Paris.

“God, these seats are so small. How many hours do we have left?”

“Four.”

“Four hours?! It can’t be.”

“I know. We’ve been flying for nine already.”

He tries to find some extra space in the small alcove under the seat in front of him, shins jammed against the padding to stretch his back, just enough to dull the ache.

“It looks like we’re heading in the right direction.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, the sun’s been in the southwest, and I don’t remember flying through that purple bank of clouds before.”

“WHAT?”

His reasoning doesn’t make much sense, but after a while, up in the air, you try to find cues for orientation anywhere, streaks of other jets flying in tangents, vapor patterns that appear and disappear, looking like houses or dragons.

“I think we should be there in less than four hours.”

“We’re going to Paris, correct?”

“So it looks like.”

Reading market signals in a strategic session feels the same. You’re flying blind with just a few scattered indicators, such as market data, economic trends, and stakeholder opinions, and a room full of people hoping you’ll make sense of it. In business, as in life, the facts are incomplete, the clock is ticking, and waiting isn’t always an option.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, in 2025, one in five businesses fails within the first year, half don’t make it past five, and based on historical trends, nearly 80% are gone by year twenty. No one is safe, not even the giants, as the average lifespan of an S&P 500 company has dropped from 61 years in 1958 to under 18 years today.

The statistics are particularly brutal on startups, with nine out of ten collapsing despite relentless drive and will. Even the ones that make it rarely know precisely why.

Right place? Right time? As much as I don’t like the word luck—it sounds like you had nothing to do with it—I hate to say that sometimes it’s just chaos breaking in your favor.

A founder once told me:

“It sounds corny, but ours is your classic startup story, starting in a garage. We worked non-stop for five years, going nowhere, with just a few small orders here and there to keep our heads above water. It was a constant no; no one could care less about our product. Then, at the end of year five, a client in Northern Europe made a big purchase, and from that moment on, it was a ripple effect. We took off.“

When you’re not in charge, leadership looks like direction, control, and vision, but when you’re the one making the call, the ground moves differently. Often, the only big picture available is the one in your mind, and you’re building it one incomplete piece at a time. If anything, it looks like a race with hurdles of different shapes and sizes along the way.

A new competitor drops out of nowhere, the team is burned out, customers vanish, the CFO flags a cash flow issue, and your head of people talks about culture collapse. The norm is a constant flow of problems, issues, and more problems.

Decision-Making Under Uncertainty

Decision-making at the top is about high pressure, limited time, and incomplete data. It’s not cowardice that stalls leaders, but consequence — one wrong move and the whole thing breaks. In the meantime, they have to maintain balance and control so everyone stays motivated and focused. After all, what good can it do for the captain to lose it altogether?

You may never have been in a leadership position, but you might have experienced in your personal life the consequences of acting too fast and causing damage, or waiting too long and missing your window. Or freeze in paralysis when feeling clueless, which might be the worst thing you could do.

If you’re facing a puzzle with half its pieces missing, the best move isn’t to wait for perfect clarity but to take small, deliberate steps that can be reversed if needed yet still uncover new insights.

Great leaders focus on the present, tackle the most urgent issue, make decisive moves, watch the outcomes, and adapt. This continuous cycle of action, learning, and adjustment keeps progress alive without gambling everything on untested guesses.

You start by looking for the one piece that feels real, the thing you can point to and know is solid. It might be a clear signal in the numbers, a shift in someone’s behavior (or your own), or a pattern that keeps resurfacing. That piece gives you a place to start, a way to anchor the next step instead of spinning in the unknown.

In a way, you’re looking for the writing on the wall, truths that may be uncomfortable when you’re hoping for a different outcome, but are always there.

What’s not working? The marketing plan is costing more than it’s bringing in, no matter how many times you tweak the ad copy. Or maybe the family routine has everyone running on fumes, laundry piling up, kids melting down over homework.

What has just changed? A competitor launched almost the exact product you’ve been working on for months, complete with a flashier campaign. Or your landlord just jacked up the rent with barely a month’s notice.

What truth have we been avoiding? Sales are sliding every month, and no pep talk is changing the numbers. Or the relationship isn’t working anymore, even though you keep hoping the next vacation or date night will fix it.

Criticizing a dynamic that is not working, wishing it were different, or feeling guilty because it is still not working will never create any real change without actions anchored in reality.

The writing on the wall is rarely a neon sign. Oddly enough, the headache, a fatigue I could not quite pinpoint, often became the loudest clue that my approach was no longer working.

The “voice” was always there; my business development needed a more systematic approach, I agreed to a project that left me irritated, or I had to end a collaboration because I could no longer trust my partner. The list goes on; I wasn’t listening, or maybe I was too afraid to hear it.

And maybe it’s the courage to choose, to keep eyes wide open, to make a choice no matter how uncomfortable it might be, the quality we admire in our leaders, and despise when we see a shortage of.

Keep advancing step by step, because each action uncovers more of the bigger picture and sharpens your strategy. Finding a balance between immediate wins and future goals is an essential part of completing the puzzle.

Leadership is knowing where you’re going but not exactly how you’ll get there. The how is revealed along the way, and only by adapting, staying flexible, and keeping communication flowing can you get there together. It starts as a dream formed in the darkest hours and takes shape in the first light of day when action begins.

PAUSE. LEARN. MOVE ON.

In leadership theory, the cycle of noticing, deciding, and adjusting is known as sensemaking, a lens leaders use to navigate complexity. Sensemaking is the process by which people figure out what’s going on so they can decide what to do next, and it involves pausing to take stock, learning from observations, and moving forward with clarity.

Organizational theorist Karl E. Weick once said, “When you’re lost in the mountains, any old map will do.” Not because the map is correct, but because standing still is worse. In complex systems, action beats paralysis, and clarity shows up after you’ve begun.

Weick introduced the idea of sensemaking to organizational studies in the late 1960s, shifting the focus from just making decisions to understanding the meaning behind those decisions and how they play out in real life. It’s about turning experiences, especially confusing or fast-changing ones, into a clear enough picture that people can act on together.

Leading is about moving forward while the pieces are still forming, and staying with it long enough for the picture to emerge. It’s knowing that your first call might not land with everyone, and that your voice, like the plan, gets clearer as you go.

Before you judge the person in the seat, remember that they’re steering through noise, half-truths, and shifting ground, the same way you do when the decision is yours.

You can reach Stephen at stephen@alygn.company