How to Lead Even When You Don't Know Where You Are Going

The chapter addresses one of the conditions Horowitz considers most characteristic of CEO work: making decisions with information that does not support certainty about the right answer. The conventional advice — gather more data, consult experts, analyze options — fails because in the situations the chapter describes, more data is not available and the analysis cannot resolve the underlying uncertainty.

Horowitz's argument is that leadership in this condition consists of three things. Make a decision in time, recognizing that no decision is itself a decision. Communicate the decision and its reasoning so the team can execute. And take full responsibility for the decision regardless of how it turns out, because the team cannot execute confidently if they believe the leader will deflect blame when the decision is questioned later.

The chapter is particularly insightful about the relationship between the decision and the communication. CEOs who make a decision and communicate it ambiguously — leaving themselves room to revise if the decision turns out wrong — produce teams that cannot commit fully because they are reading the ambiguity correctly. CEOs who communicate decisively, even when they are themselves uncertain, produce teams that execute fully, which is usually what makes the decision look right in retrospect.

The deeper claim is that decisive communication is not the same as certainty. The CEO can be uncertain internally while communicating decisively externally, and the distinction is what allows the team to function. The chapter's practical advice is to make the decision when the deadline arrives, communicate it as if you are certain, hold the responsibility for the outcome, and accept that you will sometimes be wrong. Trying to communicate the uncertainty itself usually produces paralysis in the team and erodes the leader's authority for the next decision.