03/23/2026
Some of the best leadership lessons I ever received did not come from business school.
They came from the turret of an armoured fighting vehicle.
When I was a young Officer Cadet in the Canadian Armed Forces Reserves, I spent two summers training at the Armour School at CFB Gagetown in New Brunswick as part of the Reserve Entry Scheme Officer program.
The first summer was mostly about breaking us down and building us back up. A lot of physical training, marching, and infantry exercises on foot. The goal was to test endurance, resilience, and teamwork while teaching the fundamentals of leadership.
The second summer was the one we were all looking forward to.
That was the armour training.
Driving light armoured fighting vehicles, maintenance, tactics, gunnery training, and spending time on the range firing the 76 mm gun. We spent hours in the gunnery simulator and even more time in the field running exercises.
Most of us were young reservists. What many people called “weekend warriors.”
Our instructors were the opposite. Regular Force soldiers who had served overseas and who took their profession very seriously. They were tough, direct, and extremely professional.
One day during a field exercise I was in the turret acting as the Troop Leader, responsible for leading four armoured vehicles through a tactical trace. We were stopped just behind the crest of a hill, using the terrain to hide the vehicle from anyone who might be observing from the other side.
I remember sitting there looking through the binoculars, trying to decide what to do next.
My instructor, a Captain in the Regular Force, kept pressing me.
“What are you going to do next?”
“What is the plan?”
I hesitated.
Finally he slammed his fist down and yelled,
“Make a decision!”
And in that moment I learned something important about leadership.
Not making a decision is often worse than making the wrong one.
In business we often wait for perfect information before acting. The reality is that most decisions are made with incomplete data.
Waiting rarely makes the decision easier.
Progress usually starts the moment you decide to move.
That lesson has stayed with me throughout my career.
Interestingly, decision making is one of the topics that comes up most often in my coaching work with founders and senior leaders. Many of them are carrying the weight of decisions that affect people, strategy, and the future of their companies.
It is easy to feel like you need perfect clarity before acting.
Leadership rarely works that way.
Often the real work is building the confidence to make the best decision you can with the information you have and then moving forward.
If you are in a leadership role and find yourself stuck between too many options or waiting for more information before acting, that is exactly the type of challenge we work through in coaching conversations.
https://www.CalgaryBusinessCoach.ca