Make Better Strategic Decisions Amid Uncertainty

Today’s leaders have more information at their disposal than ever before—but they also face more complexity. The rapid pace of AI expansion and geopolitical change means that strategic choices about major investments, markets, technologies, or other directions depend on a vast array of shifting variables—and these decisions have ripple effects across many interdependencies. The risks involved when making a big strategic bet are high: An ill-informed decision can take your company down the wrong path, creating significant risk, or even posing an existential threat. Hesitating while waiting for clarity can create an opening for your competitors to seize. Over-relying on your own intuition may make you more vulnerable to cognitive biases or even reluctant to change your mind even when data shows you are heading in the wrong direction. While the process of gathering and analyzing information to make strategic decisions can be time-consuming and feel overwhelming, asking the following questions will help you move quickly to obtain the insights that can help you cut through complexity and act with confidence. What problem are we really trying to solve? When you’re facing a strategic problem, it’s tempting to jump to devising solutions. But when you’re in a situation that’s unprecedented or has many unknowns or interdependencies, you may end up solving the wrong problem. Determining which problem you need to solve helps you establish the right mental model for the challenge at hand, which in turn enables you to shut out irrelevant data. It’s an added step that allows you to distinguish the signal from the noise, so you get to a good decision more quickly in the end. It allows you to be disciplined. To better define the problem, gather your leadership team for a conversation in which you generate questions about—not answers to—the strategic challenge you’re facing. Do I really need to make the big decision now? It may be wiser to take incremental steps first. This could mean identifying experiments to test assumptions and learn quickly. While doing this adds time to the process, it may buy you enough new, trustworthy data to make a better decision than the one you’d make today. For example, if you’re contemplating acquiring a company, you might first partner with or invest in it. Either alternative would gain you some of the benefits of the acquisition and get a deeper sense of the target company’s operations without taking a step that’s irrevocable. Have I sought feedback from people who will challenge my assumptions? Our cognitive biases tend to emerge when we’re dealing with uncertainty and ambiguity. They give us the appearance of solid knowns just when we are craving them. Other people are the best correctors of these biases. In addition to your usual group of advisers—your executive team, functional leaders, outside experts, and so on— when you are contemplating a big decision, get feedback from individuals who will challenge your assumptions. Prompting this kind of collision of ideas can help you identify blind spots and refine your thinking. (In the absence of other humans, you can also ask AI to present dissenting opinions.) You can also bring people into the conversation who you are more—or less—deliberate in their decision-making approach than you are. Research has shown that a mix of deliberative and speedy decision-making styles on one team can improve both decision speed and quality. What data would prove my intuition wrong? Asking how your decision might change if you learned a new detail can slow you down enough to see whether you’re overlooking critical information. (The dissenters you’ve invited into your process can help you identify the potential new details to consider.) Of course, you’ll never be able to absorb all the available information. Continuing to ask for more data before making a final call can just delay your choice (and frustrate your team). If you’re starting to see redundant data, or if you can’t imagine new information that would change your decision, go ahead and make it. How might this decision fail? Once you’re seriously contemplating a particular path, conduct a premortem to understand the weak points of the decision. This means assuming your decision failed spectacularly and listing all the reasons why. What is the worst-case scenario? This exercise will not only alert you to unexplored weaknesses that might change your mind; it can also help you shore up those weaknesses even if you decide to stay the course. . . . Decision-making is historically a lightly managed domain of business. Most companies don’t have a mechanism for examining the choices made around big decisions or measuring their success. Instituting simple after-action reviews for strategic decisions could help leaders ascertain whether they are managing them well—despite adverse conditions. Go Deeper When You Have to Make a Strategic Decision Without Much Data By Scott D. Anthony HBR.org, March 7, 2024 (9-minute read) In Uncertain Times Ask These Questions Before You Make a Decision By Cheryl Strauss Einhorn HBR.org, May 1, 2025 (13-minute read) How CEOs Hone and Harness Their Intuition By Laura Huang HBR.org, July 17, 2025 (11-minute read) Which Weak Signals Should You Pay Attention To? By Adi Ignatius HBR.org, September 12, 2025 (6-minute read) The Economic Data You Need to Make Decisions Through Volatility By Martha Gimbel and Ernie Tedeschi HBR.org, March 17, 2025 (9-minute read) Credits Expert advice courtesy of Tom Davenport (professor of IT and management at Babson College and senior advisor to Deloitte Analytics), Cheryl Strauss Einhorn (executive advisor and author, Problem Solved), Tanya Menon (professor of management and human resources at Fisher College of Business at Ohio State University), Leigh Thompson (professor of dispute resolution and organizations at the Kellogg School at Northwestern University), and Amy Webb (CEO of Future Today Strategy Group, professor at NYU Stern School of Business, and author, The Signals Are Talking).

Make Better Strategic Decisions Amid Uncertainty

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