When things move fast, action beats certainty.
The acceleration of available information and the speed of change in business have pushed leaders to act faster than they may ever have been used to. In the face of that, it’s natural to want to pause. The cost of being “wrong” can easily feel higher than the cost of waiting—making the gathering of more data feel more responsible.
But while prudent hesitation can be a leadership skill, waiting doesn’t pause a decision—it is a decision, and one that often carries significant costs. In fast-moving, complex situations, pausing reduces advantage, removes options, delays timelines, and keeps teams from the progress that forward motion unlocks. It’s a painful paradox: when leaders wait for certainty, they often isolate themselves from the very possibilities they hope clarity will provide.
A way of thinking designed for action.
While doing marketing work for the U.S. Army, I spent time inside their leadership programs. As you might expect, their leaders are trained to act in ambiguity. What was surprising, given what is often at stake, was their explicit recognition of a decision-making approach that encourages moving forward before having a complete picture of the situation.
It’s called abductive reasoning—a way of forming direction and acting from incomplete information. In modern decision contexts, often the problem isn’t a lack of data—it’s an overload of it.
Abductive reasoning seeks the simplest, most likely explanation from available observations, favoring plausible, not perfect, conclusions. More practically, it means making the best directional call available right now. For leaders, this means choosing where to aim before the data feels settled—and being explicit that the decision is directional, not final.
How leaders unlock movement: permission language.
When situations are complex and direction feels unclear, I’ve found myself using a simple phrase:
“If I had to move right now, here’s what I’d do.”
That sentence does something powerful. It admits that we’re choosing to act without absolute proof and creates permission to move forward without pretending certainty exists.
The first time I said it, I was genuinely surprised at what followed—the team went into action and real progress was made that would not have happened otherwise. And while my direction needed refinement as things became more clear, we gained momentum, understanding and experience that came from time spent exploring versus waiting.
The way leaders talk about decisions shapes how teams respond to them. Letting teams know you’re making the best call for the moment signals that the direction is provisional but intentional. It instantly lowers the sense of risk, and invites contribution rather than criticism.
Movement often has value in itself. Language shapes behavior. Intentional, provisional language allows teams to move even when clarity is absent.
How much data is enough?
One of the most common leadership questions is:
“Do we have enough information?”
A more useful question is:
“What would we do differently if we knew more?”
That question exposes hesitation that may be holding back a leader’s planning. Smart leaders know: If the answer to that question is “not much,” you already have enough information to act.
You’re ready to move forward when:
This mindset creates a bias toward progress over paralysis.
AI can help chart the path forward.
Used well, AI doesn’t make decisions for leaders, but it can shorten the distance between intuition and articulation—lowering the cost of reorienting and allowing leaders to pivot faster, and when needed, pivot more often.
AI is particularly effective at summarizing large quantities of data and identifying patterns and tensions that are otherwise hard to see. In doing so, it makes potential directions more visible. It can also help leaders pressure-test strategies, ideas, and plans against audiences or known success metrics—at a speed far faster and more fluid than internal insights teams could ever be expected to act.
AI becomes a tool for seeing and testing rather than inventing or deciding, assisting the creative act of defining where work begins.
Small bets, made early, beat big bets made late.
Across very different kinds of high-performing companies, you’ll see the same message on the walls: Fail faster. That’s because momentum doesn’t come from confidence. It comes from movement.
The advantage comes from small, deliberate bets that can be redirected as learning accumulates. That’s “failing fast” in practice—not as a slogan, but as a tool for clarity. Early actions create optionality. Late decisions create rigidity.
Sharing ownership creates better decisions.
When leaders show comfort with initial uncertainty as part of their process, they allow teams to become more comfortable with the lack of certainty as well. People feel more empowered and more a part of the solution.
When uncertainty is treated as normal, conversations can shift from: “Is this right?” to “How do we make this better?”
That is stewardship. That is trust. That is alignment made visible.
Bottom line: Creating direction in uncertainty is a powerful tool.
Every leader wants certainty. But when certainty isn’t available, they can still set direction and generate progress by making the best call for the moment, sharing ownership, and initiating recoverable first steps.
Moving forward allows more territory to be explored from the start—often producing unexpected learning. Those new understandings sharpen direction and reveal the game-changing ideas that once seemed risky.
