Last week, I was facilitating a hybrid leadership session that featured, among other things: six people in the room, nine on a screen, three time zones, and one tray of unexpectedly chilled custard slices.
This wasn’t the problem. But it sets the tone.
The session was about decision-making under pressure — how to act when the stakes are high and the information partial. The sort of work where, in theory, people say “Let’s stay agile,” but in practice they stare at each other like someone just suggested storming the car park with a whiteboard.
Early on, a senior leader said, “We just need more clarity.”
And someone else, gently, said, “Yes — but we also need to decide. And those aren’t always the same thing.”
You could feel the room pause. Not in resistance, but in realisation. Because the sentence had named something important: that clarity — this ideal, gleaming thing we chase in every meeting — can also become a delay tactic. A kind of sanctioned stalling. A nicely polished reason not to move.
I’ve seen this before.
- A team agrees to make a bold call, “as soon as we’ve mapped out all the scenarios.”
- A sponsor wants to approve the plan, “once we’re clearer on the KPIs.”
- A client is keen to launch, “once we understand the full range of variables.”
It’s not nonsense. Of course clarity matters. But often, it’s the clarity that arrives after the leap — not before it.
And this is the uncomfortable bit for leaders: sometimes action is what brings the clarity, not the other way round.
Facilitation, at its best, helps a group name that moment — the one where they’re not really waiting for better data, just for better certainty. Which doesn’t come. Because the thing they’re avoiding isn’t confusion — it’s commitment.
So we do the work. We help them step in. We hold the tension. And sometimes we do it with a tray of custard slices nearby, going slightly tacky under the lights.
It’s not elegant. But it is real.
Where have you seen clarity become the elegant excuse?
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Note: All stories are adapted and anonymised to protect client confidentiality.
