For making impossible decisions

Suzy Welch argues that leadership is fundamentally about making decisions, especially difficult ones when time is short and information is incomplete.

Key ideas

• Hard decisions are unavoidable. In business and life, leaders constantly make choices about strategy, pricing, people, and priorities. The toughest decisions typically have two characteristics: they must be made quickly, and there is not enough information available.
• Fear of failure causes indecision. People often avoid committing to decisions because they do not want to be blamed if things go wrong. Welch notes that experience teaches us that mistakes are inevitable and survivable. Owning errors, learning from them, and sharing those lessons can actually increase others’ respect for a leader.
• “Edge” is a crucial leadership trait. Welch defines edge as the ability to make a clear yes-or-no decision. Leaders who cannot decide create frustration and slow organisational progress. While gathering input is valuable, leaders must eventually commit to a course of action.
• Use intuition, but do not rely on it alone. Gut feeling is essentially pattern recognition based on past experience. However, many modern decisions involve situations with no clear precedent, so intuition should be combined with a structured decision-making process.

The 10-10-10 framework

Welch recommends her 10-10-10 method:

1. List the available options.
2. Consider the consequences of each option in:
   • 10 minutes (immediate future),
   • 10 months (foreseeable future),
   • 10 years (long-term future).
3. Compare those consequences against your values and goals.
4. Discuss assumptions and challenge each other’s reasoning before making the choice.

This creates transparency and helps teams understand why a decision was made.

Another tool: Decision trees

Welch also highlights decision trees, which map options and their possible outcomes. They are particularly useful when decisions have financial consequences because they allow organisations to evaluate multiple scenarios and their impacts systematically. Modern software and AI have made decision-tree analysis much easier than in the past.

Main takeaway

The central message is that effective leaders are not those who never make mistakes, but those who make informed decisions, take responsibility for the outcomes, learn from failures, and continue moving forward. Structured frameworks help reduce uncertainty and improve the quality of difficult decisions.

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