Leading in the absence of clear direction from the C-suite

The modern workplace faces a peculiar paradox. Whilst organisations invest heavily in strategic planning and leadership development, a growing chasm exists between executive decision-making and operational execution. This disconnect manifests in multiple ways, from C-suite indecision that paralyses middle management to misalignment between human resources teams and senior leadership that undermines people strategies. The result is organisational inertia at precisely the moment when agility and clarity are most needed.

Writing in Harvard Business Review on the issue of managing a team when the C-suite isn’t providing strategic direction, Jenny Fernandez and Kathryn Landis give the example of Lauren, a VP of operations at a high-growth technology firm, who found herself caught in an all-too-familiar predicament. The C-suite kept stalling on key decisions, including product investments, organisational restructuring, and resource allocations [1]. As leadership froze, accountability rolled downhill, leaving Lauren to manage confusion, stalled progress, and a restless team. Her situation reflects a broader crisis of executive effectiveness that is costing organisations dearly.

According to McKinsey, slow decision-making is a major driver of organisational underperformance and employee burnout, wasting over 500,000 manager days annually and costing Fortune 500 companies around £200 million in lost wages annually [2]. Meanwhile, Gallup research indicates that unclear expectations are a leading cause of employee disengagement [3]. These statistics paint a stark picture of leadership failure that extends far beyond individual cases.

Executive paralysis

The roots of C-suite indecision often lie in an organisational culture that treats reversible decisions as irreversible ones. This phenomenon becomes particularly pronounced during periods of economic uncertainty or transformation, when executive hesitation erodes momentum, weakens credibility, and drives high performers to disengage. The psychological barrier to decision-making increases when proposals feel large, final, or irreversible, even when they need not be.

Amazon’s distinction between Type 1 and Type 2 decisions offers a useful framework for understanding this paralysis [4]. Type 1 decisions are high-stakes, irreversible “one-way doors” that require careful deliberation due to their lasting impact. Type 2 decisions are low-risk, reversible “two-way doors” that can be made quickly because they’re easy to revisit or revise. The critical error many organisations make is treating the reversible as irreversible, causing them to overanalyse, overprocess, and slow down unnecessarily.

This misclassification of decisions creates a cascade of problems throughout the organisation. When senior leaders fail to provide clear strategic direction, middle managers, who serve as the crucial link between executive vision and operational reality, find themselves adrift. As one team member in Lauren’s situation observed: “We’re driving in circles. What’s the actual destination?” [5].

The HR disconnect

The leadership gap extends beyond operational decision-making into the realm of people strategy, where a troubling disconnect exists between human resources teams and the C-suite. Recent survey data from Lattice reveals only 48% of HR leaders say their C-suite takes employee engagement survey data seriously, whilst a mere 27% believe their C-suite sees HR’s impact on business revenue [6]. Perhaps most concerning, 44% of HR leaders feel increased pressure from the C-suite to justify the investment in people programmes [7].

This disconnect represents a fundamental failure of strategic alignment. As Cara Brennan Allamano, Lattice’s chief people officer, notes: “A strong, strategic CPO should have a deep understanding of the company’s business goals and objectives, using those as a north star to design talent strategies that contribute directly to achieving those goals” [8]. Yet many HR leaders walk into organisations with their own ideals about how companies should operate, with limited regard for broader organisational goals and existing culture.

The consequences of this misalignment are severe. In an era where companies routinely proclaim that people are their most valuable asset, the message rings hollow when C-suite leaders and HR aren’t working in harmony. The irony is particularly acute given that robust people strategy has become essential for company success in today’s business environment.

Change vs resistance

Compounding these challenges is the fundamental paradox of leadership transitions. Companies hire executives to drive change, but their cultures are often built to defend the status quo. This resistance to change isn’t always about defiance. More often, it stems from fear. Employees who have spent years mastering a system worry that change will diminish their expertise, reduce their influence, or put their jobs at risk.

This fear extends even to senior executives themselves. Recent survey data shows that whilst 91% of C-suite leaders are adopting generative AI, 87% also express deep concerns about its risks [9]. Such hesitation at the top trickles down throughout the organisation, creating what Sabeer Nelliparamban, writing in Forbes, describes as “leadership inertia.” [10]

The Center for Creative Leadership reports that failure rates for newly appointed executives range from 30% to 50% within the first 18 months of their tenure, typically due to unclear expectations, lack of alignment, and internal resistance [11]. For incoming leaders, this creates a high-stakes dilemma. If they push too hard, too fast, they risk alienating the very people needed for success. If they move too cautiously, they risk being absorbed into the inertia they were hired to break.

Bridging the strategic divide

Successful navigation of these challenges requires a multifaceted approach that addresses both decision-making processes and communication structures. The most effective leaders learn to reframe requests in ways that reduce psychological barriers to approval. Fernandez and Landis argue that instead of presenting proposals as comprehensive, final plans requiring immediate commitment, companies should position initiatives as “30-day pilots to gather insights before scaling” [12]. This shift transforms high-stakes decisions into low-risk experiments, enabling faster progress whilst managing perceived risk.

Equally important is the ability to quantify the cost of inaction. When executives hesitate, effective leaders make delay costs visible through real data demonstrating how stalled decisions affect business performance, employee morale, or competitive advantage. As one example illustrates, by presenting hard numbers (£180,000 in monthly churn losses and a 12% drop in engagement linked to delay) a leader shifted executive mindset and secured approval within a week [13].

The role of middle management becomes crucial in this context. These leaders serve as strategic connectors between the top floor and shop floor, and their empowerment is essential for organisational success. Research suggests that rather than eliminating middle management layers, organisations should involve these leaders in setting key performance indicators, ensuring they are bought in and can champion goals to frontline employees whilst providing candid feedback to senior leaders [14].

Technology

In today’s sophisticated, tech-savvy boardroom environment, the ability to communicate impact through data has become essential. HR leaders who exceed their goals are almost three times more likely to use performance management software and more likely to employ advanced tools for employee engagement, learning, and analytics [15]. Conversely, 65% of low-performing teams rely on simplistic tools [16].

This technology gap represents more than just operational efficiency. It demonstrates a fundamental shift in how organisational impact is measured and communicated. The rise of artificial intelligence has made clear that technological innovation isn’t slowing, with 76% of HR leaders exploring ways to incorporate AI into their practices [17]. As Donald Knight, CPO at Greenhouse, told Forbes, “HR leaders view AI as a tool, rather than a threat,” seeing it as a means of automating repetitive tasks to allow focus on more strategic initiatives [18].

Rebuilding trust

The foundation for bridging these leadership gaps lies in rebuilding trust through transparency and authentic communication. This requires what Gianna Driver, chief human resources officer at Exabeam, describes as embracing “the art of having a difficult conversation” [19]. Research indicates that transparent communications from leadership is the top driver of workplace culture [20], yet many leaders shy away from the challenging discussions that could resolve misalignments.

Effective communication at the senior level is not about simply sharing decisions but about explaining the thought process behind those decisions. As Nicky Hancock of the Forbes Human Resources Council notes, “The C-suite must show its thought process so middle managers can better understand how it supports the long-term strategy. Otherwise, they may feel they aren’t being heard, valued or trusted” [21].

This transparency extends to acknowledging when decisions are delayed or uncertain. Rather than leaving teams to speculate about direction, successful leaders maintain open channels of communication about what’s known, what’s unknown, and what’s being done to resolve ambiguity. They recognise that their role becomes that of translator, motivator, and shock absorber during periods of executive uncertainty.

What to do when the C-suite fails

The challenges of leadership alignment in modern organisations are not insurmountable, but they require deliberate effort and sustained commitment from all levels of leadership. Successful organisations recognise that strategic indecision at the top represents both a leadership stress test and a proving ground for emerging leaders.

The solution lies not in eliminating uncertainty, which is impossible in today’s volatile business environment, but in building organisational capabilities to navigate ambiguity effectively. This means creating decision-making frameworks that distinguish between reversible and irreversible choices, empowering middle management to act within defined parameters, and ensuring that support functions like HR are strategically aligned with business objectives.

Perhaps most importantly, it requires a fundamental shift in how organisations think about leadership itself. Rather than viewing leadership as a top-down function concentrated in the C-suite, successful organisations recognise that leadership capability must be distributed throughout the organisation. As Fernandez and Landis observe, “Leadership isn’t just about making decisions. It’s about how you lead through the space between them” [22].