The Misel Method explored…

1. The problem most leaders don’t have language for

Something has shifted in leadership over the past few years, and most leaders can feel it even if they struggle to name it.

Decisions feel heavier than they used to. Not because leaders are less capable, but because every decision now seems to travel further, last longer, and affect more people than expected. The margin for error feels thinner. The cost of getting it wrong feels higher. And the pace at which choices arrive leaves less time to recover when they do not land cleanly.

This is not about leaders failing to keep up.

It is about the environment in which leadership now operates.

Across organisations, industries, and sectors, I see the same pattern repeat. The work itself has become more interconnected. Technology has accelerated consequence. Stakeholders are closer to decisions than ever before. And the ripple effects of even small choices are amplified through culture, trust, systems, and people in ways that were once easier to contain.

Many leaders respond to this by trying to decide faster, gather more information, or apply familiar models more rigorously. None of those responses are wrong. They are understandable. But they often miss the underlying shift that has taken place.

The challenge leaders are facing is not a shortage of intelligence, experience, or effort. It is a change in decision conditions.

Over more than three decades working alongside leadership teams across a wide range of industries, geographies, and organisational cultures, I have seen this same pattern repeat. The language changes. The technologies evolve. The context shifts. The underlying pressure on leadership judgment does not. What leaders are experiencing now is not new, but it is intensified.

Leadership today requires holding more context at once, navigating greater uncertainty without paralysis, and making calls that will be judged not only on outcomes, but on intent, process, and impact across multiple publics. This is a different terrain from the one many leaders were trained for, even if their instincts remain sound.

When leaders describe feeling stretched, fatigued, or uncertain, it is rarely because they lack answers. More often, it is because the old ways of framing decisions no longer fit the reality they are operating in.

Until this shift is recognised for what it is, leaders tend to personalise the strain. They assume they need to work harder, decide faster, or become more decisive. What is actually required is something else entirely: a clearer way of understanding the environment decisions are now moving through.

That understanding is the starting point for everything that follows.

This page exists to explain how I make sense of that environment, and how I help leaders prepare their judgement to operate within it.

2. The two horizons leaders are forced to hold: Immediate and Inhabitable Futures

One of the quiet tensions leaders live with today is that they are expected to operate across two very different horizons at the same time.

On one hand, leaders are asked to think long term. To articulate purpose. To steward organisations toward futures that are sustainable, ethical, and meaningful. This is the horizon of vision, legacy, and what I describe as inhabitable futures. The futures organisations claim they are building toward, often measured in years or decades.

On the other hand, leadership happens in the immediate. In meetings, conversations, trade-offs, and decisions that cannot be deferred. This is the horizon where budgets are approved, people are affected, trust is built or eroded, and momentum is either created or lost. This is the horizon of immediate futures.

Most leadership strain does not come from choosing one horizon over the other. It comes from being pulled between them without recognising they operate by different rules.

Inhabitable futures ask different questions. What kind of organisation are we becoming. What values are we protecting. What future will this make possible. These questions are essential, but they do not resolve the decision that needs to be made today.

Immediate futures ask something else entirely. What happens next. Who is affected now. What consequences begin moving the moment this decision is made. These questions are not about vision. They are about traction.

When leaders confuse these horizons, judgement begins to wobble. Some decisions are delayed because they are weighed against distant ideals rather than present realities. Others are rushed because short-term pressure overwhelms longer-term intent.

Neither response is a failure of leadership. They are natural reactions to operating without a clear distinction between the horizons that leadership now spans.

What matters is not choosing one horizon and ignoring the other. What matters is knowing which horizon a decision belongs to, and how the two are connected without collapsing into each other.

Immediate futures are not small or short-sighted. They are where long-term intent is translated into lived reality. Inhabitable futures are not abstract or distant. They are shaped, incrementally, by the quality of decisions made in the immediate.

Understanding this distinction is critical, because the space between these horizons is where most leadership risk and opportunity now sits.

That space is rarely neutral. It is shaped by ripple effects.

3. Why the path between horizons is never clean

Leaders rarely move from intention to outcome in a straight line.

Between the future an organisation hopes to build and the decisions made today sits a complex terrain shaped by people, systems, culture, emotion, timing, and context. This is where most leadership surprises occur, not because leaders fail to think ahead, but because decisions interact with the organisation in ways that are rarely linear.

I describe this terrain as ripple effects.

Ripple effects are not simply unintended consequences. They are the ways decisions move through an organisation once they leave the meeting room. They travel through trust and confidence, through workload and morale, through informal norms and unspoken expectations. They are amplified or dampened by history, by timing, and by how change has been experienced before.

A decision that appears sound on paper can create friction if it lands in a team already carrying unresolved pressure. A well-intentioned shift can erode confidence if people do not understand why it was made. A small change in process can have outsized impact when it intersects with identity, role clarity, or perceived fairness.

Most ripple effects are visible in hindsight. Leaders look back and say, “We couldn’t have known.” In reality, many of these effects were always present, just not attended to at the moment the decision was made.

This is not a failure of foresight. It is a limitation of how decisions are commonly framed.

When leaders focus narrowly on outcomes, metrics, or timelines, they often miss how decisions will be experienced as they move through the organisation. Ripple effects are not distractions from strategy. They are part of how strategy becomes real.

Learning to notice these effects does not require perfect prediction. It requires a broader awareness of how decisions interact with human systems over time. It means asking not only what a decision achieves, but what it sets in motion.

The challenge is that navigating this terrain is not just technical. It is deeply human.

That human dimension is where many leaders feel the greatest strain, even if they struggle to articulate why.

4. The human cost of navigating this terrain

Behind every decision sits a human being carrying their own history, experience, expectations, and pressure.

Leaders do not arrive at decisions as blank slates. They bring past successes and failures, lessons learned under very different conditions, and memories of what happened the last time a similar call was made. At the same time, they are asked to anticipate futures that feel less stable, less predictable, and more exposed than before.

This creates a quiet tension that many leaders feel but rarely name.

Past experience can become a weight. What once worked may no longer fit, yet it is hard to let go of approaches that previously earned trust or success. At the same time, imagined futures can exert their own pull. Anxiety about what might happen, how decisions will be judged, or what consequences could emerge begins to shape choices before evidence is available.

I describe this tension as Past Trauma, Future Anxiety. PTFA is not a diagnosis or a weakness. It is a natural human response to operating in environments where the cost of getting things wrong feels amplified and the ground beneath decisions feels less stable.

Under PTFA, judgement can narrow. Leaders may become more cautious than intended, or conversely, more reactive. Decisions can be driven by the desire to avoid repeating past pain or to pre-empt future criticism, rather than by a clear reading of the present.

Most leaders are not conscious of this influence as it happens. They simply feel the pressure increase and assume it is part of the job. Over time, carrying this load without acknowledgement can erode confidence, increase fatigue, and make leadership feel heavier than it needs to be.

Recognising PTFA is not about dwelling on the past or worrying about the future. It is about understanding how both quietly shape decision-making in the present.

When leaders begin to notice this dynamic, they regain an important degree of choice. They are better able to separate what is actually being asked of them now from what they are reacting to unconsciously. That awareness alone can restore clarity and steadiness under pressure.

The question then becomes not just how leaders decide, but who or what they trust to support leadership decision-making in complex environments.

That question sits at the heart of how decisions are made today.

5. How decisions are actually made now

Very few leadership decisions today are made by humans alone.

Even when a leader believes they are deciding independently, their judgement is shaped by systems, data, models, processes, and increasingly by algorithmic or AI-assisted inputs. Recommendations are surfaced. Risks are flagged. Patterns are suggested. Options are narrowed before a human ever speaks.

This is not a problem to be solved. It is a reality to be understood.

What has changed is not that machines or AI are involved in decision-making, but that the boundaries of trust between humans, technology, and automated systems are often unclear. Leaders are left to intuitively decide when to rely on data, when to override it, and when to trust their own judgement, often without an explicit framework for doing so.

I describe these boundaries as Decision Trust Zones.

Decision Trust Zones are not about delegating responsibility. They are about clarity. They make explicit which kinds of decisions are best informed by human judgement, which benefit from machine precision, and where AI can assist without displacing accountability.

When these zones are unclear, leaders either over-trust systems or under-use them. They defer to data that lacks context, or they ignore signals that could meaningfully inform their judgement. Both responses increase risk, not because technology is flawed, but because trust has not been consciously designed.

Clear Decision Trust Zones allow leaders to remain accountable while making better use of the tools available to them. They help organisations decide not just what technology can do, but what it should do, and where human judgement must remain central.

This clarity becomes especially important as decisions move faster and consequences compound. Without it, leaders can feel squeezed between expectation and uncertainty, unsure when to rely on support and when to stand alone.

Understanding how trust is distributed in decision-making is no longer optional. It is a core part of modern leadership.

How that trust translates into action depends on how work itself is structured.

6. How work itself is being rebalanced

Once decisions are made, they have to be carried out. This is where judgement meets reality.

In many organisations, strain does not come from poor decisions, but from how those decisions are translated into work. Tasks are added without being removed. Accountability is blurred. Humans are asked to compensate for systems that are poorly designed or over-automated, while technology is expected to solve problems it was never intended to handle.

This is where work begins to feel misaligned with judgement.

I describe this rebalancing of work as HUMAND. Not as a slogan, but as a practical way of understanding how work is now distributed between humans, machines, and AI.

HUMAND recognises that different elements of work require different strengths. Humans bring context, empathy, creativity, and moral judgement. Machines bring consistency, scale, and reliability. AI brings pattern recognition, speed, and support in complex environments. Problems arise when these strengths are confused or collapsed into one another.

When humans are forced to work like machines, judgement erodes. When machines are expected to exercise judgement, risk increases. When AI is introduced without clarity about its role, trust fractures.

HUMAND is not about replacing people or resisting technology. It is about designing work so that judgement is supported rather than diluted. It asks a simple but critical question of every task and decision: who or what is best placed to do this well, and why.

When work is balanced this way, leaders are no longer compensating for poor design with personal effort. Judgement flows more cleanly into action. People understand their role in the system, and technology does what it does best without overreach.

This rebalancing does not happen through policy alone. It requires leaders to consciously design how decisions move through the organisation.

That design becomes far more reliable when foresight is treated as a discipline rather than an occasional exercise.

 7. Why foresight must be practiced, not studied

Foresight is often misunderstood as an intellectual activity. Something to be learned, analysed, or consulted periodically, usually when strategy is being refreshed or uncertainty spikes.

In practice, foresight only becomes useful when it is woven into everyday judgement.

Leaders do not need more information about the future. They need a way of holding judgement steady when decisions are made under pressure, with incomplete information and real consequences. This is where foresight moves from theory into discipline.

Practised well, foresight does not sit outside decision-making. It shapes how decisions are framed in the moment. It prompts leaders to notice ripple effects before they accelerate. It creates space for intuition and experience to work alongside data, rather than being overridden by it.

This is why my work focuses on Immediate Futures.

Immediate Futures are not about distant horizons or speculative scenarios. They are about the next layer of consequence that begins the moment a decision is made. The meeting that follows. The behaviour that shifts. The trust that is strengthened or eroded. The workload that increases quietly somewhere else in the system.

These ideas are often encountered separately, but they are designed to work as a single system. Immediate Futures anchor judgement in what is unfolding now, where leadership actually acts. Ripple Effects reveal how decisions travel through people, trust, systems, and culture over time. PTFA explains the human tension leaders carry as they navigate between what has been and what might be. Decision Trust Zones clarify where judgement sits between humans, machines, and AI. HUMAND ensures that work is designed so judgement survives execution. Together, they form a coherent way of preparing leadership to move deliberately toward inhabitable futures rather than drifting there by accident.

By paying attention to Immediate Futures, leaders avoid two common traps. They stop reacting purely to past patterns, and they stop overcorrecting for imagined futures. Instead, they anchor judgement in what is unfolding now, while remaining aware of where it is leading.

Over time, this way of thinking becomes habitual. Leaders do not slow down. They become more deliberate. Decisions feel cleaner. Confidence increases, not because uncertainty disappears, but because judgement is better prepared to meet it.

Foresight, practised this way, is not an add-on. It is a way of leading that holds up under pressure and remains human in environments that increasingly are not.

8. What changes when organisations do this well

When foresight is practised as part of everyday judgement, organisations begin to feel different.

Meetings become cleaner. Fewer decisions are revisited because the framing was clearer from the start. Leaders spend less time defending past choices and more time moving forward deliberately. Conversations shift from reacting to symptoms toward understanding conditions.

Trust increases, not because outcomes are always certain, but because people can see how decisions are being made. Even when choices are difficult, the process feels considered rather than rushed. This steadiness travels through teams, reducing unnecessary escalation and second-guessing.

Workload also changes in subtle but important ways. When ripple effects are noticed earlier, pressure does not accumulate invisibly in parts of the organisation that are already stretched. Decisions land with greater awareness of who will carry them, how they will be interpreted, and what support is required for them to succeed.

Leader’s report feeling calmer, even as complexity remains. Not because the work is easier, but because judgement is no longer constantly under strain. There is less drag created by unclear responsibility, poorly designed work, or mistrust between human judgement and technological systems.

Over time, this reshapes how people think, speak, and act when decisions are being formed. People become more confident in raising concerns early. Teams understand how decisions travel and where their voice matters. The organisation develops a shared language for consequence, timing, and trust.

This is not transformation in the dramatic sense. It is something more durable. A quiet strengthening of how decisions are made and carried, day after day.

9. How this work shows up in the real world

This way of working does not live in theory. It shows up in specific contexts, at different depths, depending on what leaders and organisations need at the time.

In keynote settings, the work is about shared understanding. Leaders are given language for experiences they are already having, and a clearer view of the forces shaping judgement, trust, and decision-making. The goal is not motivation, but orientation. Helping people see the environment they are operating in more accurately.

In workshops, the focus shifts to practice. Leaders work with real decisions, real constraints, and real consequences. The emphasis is on how judgement is formed, how trust is distributed, and how ripple effects are noticed before they compound. This is where foresight becomes tangible, not as a framework to learn, but as a way of working together.

Advisory work sustains this over time. It supports leaders as decision conditions evolve, technology shifts, and organisational pressure fluctuates. The discipline is not imposed. It is adapted, embedded, and refined so it holds under the specific realities each organisation faces.

Each of these contexts serves a different purpose. None replace the others. Together, they create continuity between insight, practice, and sustained judgement.

These forms exist deliberately, because insight alone does not change leadership behaviour. Judgement only shifts when thinking is shared, practised, and sustained over time, close to real decisions.

The format doesn’t matter. What does is that foresight remains close to real decisions, rather than drifting into abstraction.

10. Choosing forward

The future does not arrive all at once.

It arrives decision by decision, meeting by meeting, moment by moment, through the choices leaders make under conditions that are rarely clear or stable. In those moments, certainty is a poor guide. Speed alone is not enough. What matters most is the quality of judgement that shapes what happens next.

Inhabitable futures are not created by vision alone. They are built through thousands of immediate decisions made with care, context, and respect for the humans who must live with their consequences.

This work is not about predicting what lies ahead. It is about preparing leaders to meet what emerges without losing clarity, confidence, or humanity.

By distinguishing between immediate and inhabitable futures, leaders avoid being pulled too far backward by past experience or too far forward by imagined outcomes. By noticing ripple effects, they reduce unintended harm and increase the chance that intent translates into lived reality. By understanding the human dynamics of PTFA, they lead with greater awareness of what pressure does to judgement. By clarifying Decision Trust Zones and rebalancing work through HUMAND, they ensure that technology supports leadership rather than distorts it.

None of this removes uncertainty. It changes how leaders relate to it.

Over time, foresight becomes less about foresight itself and more about steadiness. Decisions feel cleaner.

Choosing forward is not a declaration. It is a practice.

It is the choice to prepare judgement rather than chase certainty. To remain human in systems that increasingly are not. And to shape the future through deliberate action in the present.

Choose Forward