Most decisions business leaders make happen when something is already on fire. The budget's blown, the key account is threatening to leave, the division head just resigned. So you decide fast, under pressure.
Proactive decision-making means getting there earlier. You see the risk before it turns into a problem. And you decide while more than one road is still open.
In 2020, Forbes asked 12 members of its Coaches Council how that works day to day. I was one of them. Six years later I've reread all 12 answers with 20 years of coaching business leaders in mind. What holds up, and what just sounds good.
Business leaders without a picture of where they want to be react. With one, they can choose. The 3-step is simple: Describe the target, assess your position honestly (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats), pick 3 projects that carry the target. Three is enough. The choosing is the decision.
Origin: Daphna Horowitz, Daphna Horowitz Leadership
Market, technology, regulation: How fast is your environment moving? That estimate tells you how often to adjust processes, responsibilities and communication. Plenty of organisations run on an annual rhythm inside while the outside world decides quarterly. The people around business leaders spot that gap first.
Origin: Dennis Volpe, LRI
Scenario planning is old, military in origin, and unknown in most executive teams. It's also the simplest tool against surprises: Describe 3 possible futures, define the first moves for each, then watch which one shows up. One day a year is enough if someone takes the facilitation seriously.
Origin: Susan Madsen, Jon M. Huntsman School of Business
A goal 8 to 10 years out. Milestones at 3 years and at 1 year. A handful of strategic priorities per quarter, derived from those. And at least one action per priority every day. That sounds like discipline, and it is. Staying loyal to the long goal is the owner's job. You can't delegate it. Whether 8 to 10 years is realistic in your industry, I doubt it. Three years is often hard enough to hold.
Origin: Sturdy McKee, SturdyMcKee.com
Which talent will you be missing in 18 months? Which customers leave when your competitor launches? Nobody answers those questions from the gut. You need conversations with people who tell you the truth: Customers, suppliers, your second line of leadership. Listen outside and you'll decide earlier inside.
Origin: Izabela Lundberg, Legacy Leaders Institute
Business leaders watch the big items: Regulation, the economy, the numbers. The small disruptions run alongside. A process that keeps snagging. A team conflict that “will blow over”. What you skip today lands on the agenda in 6 months as an emergency, at a far higher price.
Origin: Amera McCoy, McCoy Consulting LLC
Daily business pulls business leaders' attention to whatever is loudest. Block a window every week for the bigger questions: Where are we in a year? What are we missing right now? Same for your leadership team. If you don't make time for strategy, you won't make strategic decisions either.
Origin: Kimberly Roush, All-Star Executive Coaching
A standing item at the start of every meeting: What belongs on next time's agenda? The team knows the coming priorities, prepares, and the discussion gets shorter. Side effect: Nobody hijacks today's meeting with a topic that's due next week.
Origin: Karan Rhodes, Shockingly Different Leadership
Get division heads and, where useful, external coaches around one table with a single rule: Speak openly. Which areas need attention in the coming months? Which problems are forming? Include all levels, ask questions, develop several options. Decide afterwards, with the options on the table.
Origin: Miranda VonFricken, Masterminds & Personal Growth Coaching
This one is my own contribution to the panel, and as an executive coach I still stand by it. Involve the people who can influence the decision before it's made. Participation serves the decision. As a ritual it wastes time. Make it clear who makes which decision and by which principles. Then act, then reflect, both with a fixed place on the agenda.
Origin: Cristian Hofmann, Empowering Executives, SUPERGROUP AG
The hardest thing for busy business leaders: Time to plan. The best ones block it in the calendar, for themselves and for their team, and defend it against every “quick” meeting. Routine beats intention. One fixed block a week, same day, same time.
Origin: Lisa Coleman, Lisa Coleman Advisory Services
In uncertain times the 5-year plan is worth little. The picture from the panel: A children's birthday party from 2 to 6 p.m. can hardly be planned to the minute. Whether that picture holds for a company of 2,000 people, I don't know. The core still stands: A few hard limits (time, budget, safety) and freedom to experiment inside them. Mistakes stay affordable that way.
Origin: Michael Thiemann, Strategy-Lab
Almost all 12 ideas share one core: A fixed moment where business leaders look before something happens. A strategy day, a weekly window, a standing agenda item. Proactive decision-making is a calendar question first and a method question second. Maybe that's too simple. I still think it's where most leaders fail.
If that moment is in your calendar, you decide early. If it isn't, you decide when it's on fire.
Further reading on hofmann.coach: Positive Leadership: Five Tests to Run Before You Invest · Leadership lives in the minds of those you lead · Leadership Coaching
Note: The 12 ideas come from the Forbes Coaches Council expert panel “12 Ways For Business Leaders To Make More Proactive Decisions”, published 18 December 2020. Contribution no. 10 is my own. My reading of the other eleven is mine, and it isn't a quote of my colleagues' wording.
Cristian Hofmann is an executive coach in Zurich and Schaffhausen (MAS Coaching & Supervision BSO, Forbes contributor). Over more than 20 years he has coached more than 1,500 business leaders: CEOs, executive boards and leadership teams in Switzerland, with measurably agreed goals and, on request, pay-for-results. More about Cristian Hofmann.
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