One of the most misunderstood challenges in leadership and business today is not a lack of knowledge. Leaders are surrounded by information. They attend conferences, read reports, hire consultants and are constantly exposed to new strategies, tools and frameworks. Yet despite this abundance, the same decisions are often repeated even when their limitations and negative consequences are already visible.
This paradox is usually explained through familiar narratives: fear of change, resistance from teams, risk aversion, or weak courage. These explanations are comfortable but incomplete. In reality, many of the leaders who repeat ineffective decisions are neither uninformed nor incapable. They are often experienced, responsible and highly competent. The issue lies deeper than surface-level hesitation.
The real challenge is not what leaders know, but how decisions are formed beneath awareness.
Decisions are rarely made at the moment they appear to be. Long before options are consciously evaluated, an internal framework has already narrowed what feels acceptable, realistic, or safe. This framework is shaped by past successes, early career experiences and lessons that once protected the leader or the organisation. When left unexamined, it quietly governs future choices. Decisions then feel deliberate but are in fact automated responses to familiar patterns.
Paradoxically, the more successful a leader has been, the more powerful and dangerous this automation becomes.
Across organisations, it is common to observe leaders holding on to structures, processes, or leadership styles that were effective in an earlier phase but no longer align with current realities. Markets evolve, technologies advance and workforce expectations shift. Leaders often sense declining engagement, rising turnover, or stagnating performance. Yet action is delayed, diluted, or endlessly postponed.
This hesitation is not driven by ignorance. It is driven by the mind’s natural preference for stability. From a cognitive perspective, the brain is designed to preserve continuity, not to maximise growth or alignment. Once a decision delivers an outcome that is “good enough”, it becomes registered as safe. Over time, that decision stops feeling like a choice and starts functioning as a default.
At that point, repetition is no longer conscious. It is procedural.
Consider organisations that hesitate to restructure teams or redefine authority despite clear performance gaps. On paper, the reasoning often sounds responsible: protecting culture, avoiding disruption, maintaining morale. In practice, however, the outcome is prolonged inefficiency, blurred accountability and the gradual departure of high performers. The economic cost is rarely immediate or dramatic, but it accumulates steadily through lost productivity, delayed innovation and rising replacement costs.
What makes this pattern particularly difficult to challenge is the absence of visible failure. Results may remain acceptable, allowing leaders to rationalise inaction while the gap between potential and performance quietly widens. Stability is preserved, but progress stalls.
This is where many leadership conversations fall short. The focus tends to be on motivation, decisiveness, or confidence. Yet meaningful change rarely comes from pushing harder or acting faster. It comes from questioning the internal logic that defines what feels possible in the first place.
A more revealing question is not, Why do I keep making this decision? but rather, what am I trying to protect by keeping it?
Often, the answer has little to do with external constraints. Leaders may be protecting an identity shaped by past success, a reputation built in a different organisational era, or a sense of control that once felt essential. In some cases, they are holding on to an outdated definition of success that no longer aligns with their current role or the organisation’s evolving needs.
Until these internal frameworks are made visible, change feels like a threat rather than a recalibration. The mind interprets disruption as loss of certainty, status, or self-image even when the long-term benefits are evident. As a result, leaders remain loyal to decisions that no longer serve them, their teams, or their organisations.
This dynamic has become especially pronounced in today’s economic and technological environment. Rapid transformation, artificial intelligence and shifting workforce expectations have exposed the limits of decision-making rooted in past assumptions. Organisations that fail to examine their internal decision logic risk becoming highly efficient at preserving what is already obsolete.
Breaking this cycle does not require dramatic reinvention. It begins with awareness. When leaders pause to observe the frameworks guiding their choices rather than defending the choices themselves, they create space for more intentional leadership.
True stability is not found in repetition. It is found in the alignment between who leaders have become and the decisions they continue to make. Until that alignment is consciously restored, even the most capable leaders will continue to repeat decisions that no longer work calmly, rationally and at a quiet but significant cost.
Kamla al Rahbi
The writer is a leadership and business strategist focused on decision-making, organisational clarity, and cognitive frameworks in complex environments.
Oman Observer is now on the WhatsApp channel. Click here
