Capacity Under Pressure (3 Agilities for Strategic Decisions)

Make better high-stakes decisions in uncertainty by developing the 3 agilities (emotional, cognitive, and navigational) needed to lead when no clear answers exist.

Today's leaders face a difficult challenge: They must make high-stakes decisions before they have enough information to know whether those choices will succeed.

Organizations operate in a BANI world, one that is brittle, anxious, nonlinear, and increasingly difficult to predict. Yet many leaders continue to make strategic decisions using mental models built for a more stable era.

This book reveals why leaders often narrow their options under pressure, mistake activity for impact, and seek certainty when ambiguity demands something different. Executive coach Karin Blair shows that the quality of strategic decisions depends less on what leaders know and more on what they can hold without reacting, oversimplifying, or forcing premature resolution.

Through a powerful framework built around 3 interconnected agilities, readers learn how to

• build emotional agility to stay grounded under pressure,
• develop cognitive agility to hold competing perspectives and challenge assumptions, and
• strengthen navigational agility to sustain commitment when results remain uncertain.

Filled with practical leadership insights and real-world examples, this book helps leaders expand their decision field, choose coherence over relief, and create strategies that compound into meaningful long-term impact.