5 Steps to Better Decisions: The FOCUS Framework for Leaders
After 30 years in and around corporates and SMEs as well as coaching senior leaders across industries, one truth remains:
decision quality defines leadership impact.
Yet in high-stakes moments, even the best leaders fall into traps such as
fatigue
urgency
bias
overconfidence
and lack of reflection
We can all point to people in the public eye that have failed to make quality decisions.
Take the Post Office Horizon scandal*. Leadership ignored evidence, resisted challenge, and kept doubling down. It’s a stark reminder of what happens when no one’s willing to pause and ask the right questions.
That’s why I developed the FOCUS Decision Framework. A five-step method grounded in behavioural science and refined through my own experiences in and around boardrooms and senior leaders.
Here’s how it works:
Feel Check – Pause. Ask: Am I tired, stressed, or reactive? Mental fatigue clouds judgment.
Own the Clock – Challenge urgency. Ask: Is this really urgent? Most deadlines are negotiable.
Check Perspectives – Seek one contrarian view. It’s the fastest way to uncover blind spots.
Understand Risk – Define your failure tolerance. What’s the worst-case I can live with?
Scan & Learn – Debrief every key decision. What worked? What didn’t? That’s how you build wisdom.
Why I Created the FOCUS Decision Framework
In my coaching practice, I’ve worked with leaders navigating huge value decisions, global crises, and personal turning points. What separates the best from the rest isn’t just intelligence or experience, it’s their ability to make clear, confident decisions under pressure.
I can think of specific examples in my own career where I have failed to pause sufficiently and ask myself, “Am I being reactive, or too sensitive?”. It’s easy to jump to a response if tired or feeling emotional. I know that I have upset people and made the wrong call when stressed and under perceived time constraints.
Pressure distorts thinking. It accelerates timelines, narrows perspectives, and amplifies risk.
In my coaching practice, I have had many conversations with clients that revolve around perspective and the need to seek perfection in decisions and outputs. It was clear that if I could provide a process for managers and leaders to follow under pressure, then I have done my job as a coach and mentor.
Therefore, the FOCUS Decision Framework was designed to help modify behaviours day to day to build positive habits when making crucial decisions.
1. Feel Check – Pause. Ask: Am I tired, stressed, or reactive?
Even judges make poor decisions when tired
Cognitive fatigue is a silent saboteur. Not business related, but a 2011 study of over 1,100 judicial rulings found that judges were significantly more likely to grant parole early in the day or after breaks, dropping from 65% to nearly 0% before lunch (Danziger et al., 2011).
Sleep deprivation impairs the prefrontal cortex, reducing emotional regulation and increasing impulsivity (Killgore, 2010). Leaders under stress are more likely to default to habitual or biased responses, what Daniel Kahneman calls “System 1” thinking.
Decision fatigue can reduce decision quality by up to 50% in high-stakes environments.
2. Own the Clock – Is this really urgent? Can I buy time?
Time pressure is a cognitive tax. Under tight deadlines, people process 45% less information and rely more heavily on heuristics (Kocher & Sutter, 2006).
Heuristics are mental shortcuts we use to make decisions quickly - especially under pressure or when facing limited information.
While heuristics can help streamline thinking and save time, they can also lead to biases and errors if relied upon too heavily. In the context of decision-making frameworks like FOCUS, recognising when you're using heuristics and questioning whether they're leading you in the right direction is crucial for improving the quality of your decisions.
A 2024 study in Frontiers in Psychology found that perceived urgency, not actual time constraints, was the primary driver of poor decision outcomes in executive teams.
Leaders under time pressure are 2.5x more likely to make decisions based on incomplete data.
3. Check Perspectives – Who sees this differently?
Uniform thinking stifles innovation. The data supports it: studies show that diverse teams solve complex problems 35% better than like-minded ones (McKinsey, 2020). Teams comprised of members with similar backgrounds and perspectives often result in uniform thought.
In high-stakes decisions, even one dissenting voice can reduce groupthink and expose blind spots. Leaders who actively seek contrarian views are more likely to avoid catastrophic errors. Teams that include at least one dissenting opinion reduce decision failure rates by 30%.
4. Understand Risk – What’s the worst-case I can live with?
Risk perception is highly malleable. Under pressure, leaders tend to swing between risk aversion (in loss frames) and risk seeking (in gain frames), as shown in Kahneman and Tversky’s Prospect Theory. According to this work, people don’t evaluate risk rationally. Under pressure, we swing between extremes:
We become risk-averse when facing potential losses
And risk-seeking when chasing gains
In other words: the same leader can make two completely different decisions based on how the problem is framed, even if the facts don’t change.
A study in Acta Psychologica found that fatigued individuals overestimate their confidence by up to 40% while underestimating downside risk (Yates & Stone, 1992). Explicitly framing acceptable failure scenarios improves decision calibration by 25%.
5. Scan & Learn – What worked? What didn’t?
Reflection is the multiplier of experience.
Even micro-pauses of less than 1 second have been shown to improve decision accuracy in high-speed environments like aviation and surgery (Klein, 1998). Yet fewer than 20% of leadership teams regularly debrief major decisions. This is a missed opportunity.
Debriefs build pattern recognition, which is the foundation of executive intuition.
Leaders who take the time to reflect on key decisions improve future decision accuracy by 23% on average.
Final Thought: Decision-Making Gets Better with Practice
The FOCUS Framework isn’t just a checklist, it’s a discipline, it’s a behavioural adaptation. A rhythm. A way to lead with clarity when others freeze or flap.
It’s built on science, tested in the field, and designed for leaders and managers who want better decision-making in leadership and management. Faster, and with fewer regrets.
If you're interested in hearing how I can help you be more impactful with your decision-making process, book a FREE call with me.
*Disclaimer: The views expressed in this blog are based on publicly available information and are intended for general commentary only. They do not constitute legal advice or a definitive account of any individual or organisation's actions.
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