Hi {{first_name}}

The meeting happened. The decision was made. It was communicated clearly enough, and the team left with a direction.

Then, quietly, it unravelled. Someone raised a concern in a corridor conversation. A new piece of information surfaced. The leader wondered whether the call was right. Two weeks later, the decision is back on the table, dressed up as a review.

The organisation has been here before. It recognises the pattern, even if the leader does not.

Why this matters more than it appears

LHH’s 2026 View from the C-Suite survey of over 2,500 organisations worldwide found that ineffective decision-making processes rank among the top constraints on leadership performance for the second consecutive year. More than a quarter of senior leaders identify them as a primary limiter of effectiveness. *

The revisited decision is one of the most common forms that ineffective decision-making takes at the senior level, and one of the least examined. It does not show up in governance reviews. It does not trigger a postmortem. It simply happens repeatedly, and the organisation adjusts.

Teams learn to hold back full commitment until a decision has proven durable. They learn to build in contingency for the likelihood that the direction will shift. They learn over time that the leader’s word is provisional. The cost of that learning compounds quietly across every initiative the organisation tries to run.

What is actually driving it

A leader who frequently revisits decisions is not usually indecisive by nature. Most times, the pattern has a specific source: a fear of being visibly wrong.

The original decision felt sound in the room. But in the days that follow, as the weight of it settles, a different calculation begins. What if the information were incomplete? What if the objections that were not raised should have been? What if this is the decision that exposes a gap in judgement?

The Mask, the limiting behavioural pattern that activates under pressure, reads that uncertainty as danger and responds by keeping the decision open. Not overturning it formally. Just softening the edges, inviting more discussion, allowing ambiguity to persist where clarity was supposed to exist.

It feels like due diligence. It is not. It is the pattern protecting itself.

The reframe

Senior leaders decide most things with incomplete information. That is not a flaw. It is the condition in which leaders operate. Waiting for certainty before committing, or reopening decisions when certainty fails to arrive, does not improve the quality of the outcome. It degrades the organisation’s ability to execute.

Once made and communicated, a decision ceases to be a hypothesis requiring testing. It signals to the organisation about the location of authority and its reliability.

The leader who can make a call, hold it under pressure, and correct course openly when new information genuinely warrants it, rather than quietly when discomfort demands it, is the leader whose organisation moves.

The distinction matters. One is leadership. The other is the pattern running in its place.

One thing to try this week

Consider a decision you made in the past month that you have reviewed or softened since you shared it.

Ask one question: was it reopened because the situation genuinely changed, or because the discomfort of holding the position became harder to bear than the cost of reopening it?

The honest answer is usually the more useful one.

Best wishes,

Gavin

*Source: LHH, 2026 View from the C-Suite.