How a Wrong Turn in the Grand Canyon Changed How I Make Decisions

Standing in the depths of the Grand Canyon as the sun set, I faced a problem that would later define how I think about leadership decisions. The trail ahead had vanished into a maze of reddish-brown rock. Every direction looked identical. The familiar markers were gone, swallowed by shadows and sameness.

I couldn't see the path, but I had to move. Darkness was coming and we weren't somewhere we could camp.

This moment captures something many leaders face. You're responsible for direction when the way forward isn't clear. Your team is looking to you for answers you don't have. The familiar markers that guided past decisions no longer apply.

The temptation is to stand still, gather more information, wait for clarity. In business, as in canyons at sunset, that isn't an option.

The Paralysis of Perfect Information

Most leaders have been trained to make decisions with complete data. Analyse the market, study the competition, model the scenarios, present the business case. This works well when the environment is stable and the variables are known.

What happens when you're operating in uncharted territory, when the market is shifting faster than your analysis can keep up, when your competitors are making moves that don't fit the traditional playbook?

Managers get analysis paralysis. They freeze because they can't see the complete picture, and teams stall while waiting for perfect clarity that never comes.

In the canyon that evening, I realised something crucial: you don't need to see the entire path. Action precedes clarity.

The Three-Choice Navigation System

That night, I developed a simple system that has since guided thousands of business decisions. Take a small step forward and assess what you learn. Every action reveals one of three outcomes:

Right path – The ground is solid, the direction feels correct, obstacles are manageable. Continue with confidence.

Nearly right path – You're close but not quite there. The terrain is challenging but navigable. Course correct and keep moving.

Wrong path – The ground is unstable, obstacles are insurmountable, or you're clearly heading away from your destination. Stop, backtrack, choose a different direction.

The goal is identifying wrong paths quickly and cheaply, before they consume budget, headcount or credibility.

In business, this means finding the smallest action that will reveal which track you're on, because the move that solves everything in one go rarely exists.

We teach the game of 1%. Your level of confidence to make a small decision is greater than a large one, which figures. So make lots of smaller decisions more quickly until you can take a bigger one.

The goal is learning. You want information that helps you move forward, not results that define your success.

Why Leaders Resist Small Steps

Most leaders resist this approach because it feels inefficient. They want to make big, decisive moves that demonstrate leadership. Small steps feel tentative, uncertain, weak.

Big moves in uncertain terrain are dangerous, though. They consume resources, create momentum that's hard to reverse, and often reveal problems too late to fix them cheaply.

Small steps preserve options. They let you fail fast and cheap. They build confidence through learning rather than hoping.

The Navigation Questions

When you can't see the path ahead, ask yourself:

What's the smallest step I can take that will teach me something most valuable?

The step that will reveal whether you're heading in the right direction, not the one that will solve the problem outright.

What would I need to see to know I'm on the right track?

Define your success indicators before you move. What evidence would convince you to continue? What would make you course correct? What would make you stop?

How quickly can I recognise if this isn't working?

Set clear checkpoints. After one week, one month, one quarter, what will you measure? How will you know if you need to adjust?

What's the cost of being wrong?

If this step doesn't work out, what have you lost? Time, money, credibility, opportunity? Make sure the cost of learning is acceptable.

The Confidence Paradox

What surprised me most was this: taking small, uncertain steps builds more confidence than waiting for certainty. It also gives your team a direction to follow.

Each step teaches you something about the terrain. Each course correction improves your navigation. Each small success builds momentum for bigger moves.

Leaders who wait for perfect information never develop the muscle memory of decision-making under uncertainty. When they finally do move, they're unpractised and unsteady.

Leaders who take small steps regularly become comfortable with ambiguity. They develop intuition about which paths to explore and which to abandon quickly.

The path will reveal itself as you walk it, but only if you start walking.

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If this sounds like your week

Your managers are not the problem. They are where the problem is stuck.

When your last leadership spend was signed off, did anyone go back to those managers' bosses and ask what changed? That question is the JBL Outcome Standard, and it is how I work.

• Find the friction. A short diagnostic that shows which decisions are stalling, and at what level.
• Am I the bottleneck? Ten questions on where your week is actually going.
• How I work with GMs. Six weeks, one hour a week, up to twelve of your managers, scored by their own bosses.
• Beat Burnout, Boost Performance. The book.
• The High Performance Leader podcast.

Managers I work with reclaim around four hours a week, and their bosses score the change 8.75 out of 10. Would it be a crazy idea to find out how we did this? Book a scoping call.