© 2025 James Hardie – Course Correction Consulting Ltd. The EASE Framework™ is a proprietary model developed by James Hardie to support the creation of psychologically safe, empowered, and strategically aligned teams. All rights reserved.
.svg)
.svg)
Have you ever noticed how a need for some leadership begins with a perception of uncertainty, your own and your potential followers, and those other leaders.Therefore before we take action, we must try and understand the situation we are responding to. It may be critical that we get this right first time.
Have you ever noticed how a need for some leadership begins with a perception of uncertainty, your own and your potential followers, and those other leaders.
Therefore before we take action, we must try and understand the situation we are responding to. It may be critical that we get this right first time.
"There are two ways of doing things. Right first time and Again." Jake Zweig, former Navy SEAL and TV Survivalist
Yet in many organisations, perhaps in yours, action is mistaken for progress. We reward decisiveness, speed, and confidence, often at the expense of clarity. The result is a tendency to move quickly but blindly. We start solving before we have explored. Academic research studies on this area of leadership have been carried out by Keith Grint where he looked at preferred leadership styles and their appropriateness or not in different situations.
For example, sometimes people in positions of authority feel obligated to take command, after all they are the boss.
Command is most appropriate for a crisis, where expert knowledge of what is necessary, and the authority to give orders, which may be useful to follow to the letter and on the word of command.
However, if there is time to question a command then it may be that a command preference style engineers regular crisis points to realise, "We don't have time to discuss this," means that you had better be right.
Leadership is quite often about having the courage to appear indecisive to some, to give other people the permission to think and come up with a better plan. To adapt to new information and still operate with intent.
The first principle of the EASE Framework is Explore. It is the disciplined habit of slowing down just enough to see clearly, assess the situation, before acting with purpose. You may want to take a breath or two and really have a good think. Get time back to running at normal speed.
In aviation, one of the most dangerous situations a pilot can face is flying at night or in low visibility. In such conditions, spatial disorientation becomes a real risk. The body tells a convincing story about direction and movement, but that story is often wrong.
The safe choice is to trust the instruments.
This act of scanning, interpreting, and aligning perception with reality is not instinctive. It is trained. It requires intentional exploration of what is actually happening, regardless of how it feels.
This same discipline applies to leadership. Without it, we risk leading based on assumption rather than understanding.
One of the clearest models for disciplined situational thinking comes from military strategist and former fighter pilot John Boyd. His OODA Loop—Observe, Orient, Decide, Act—is a core tool in combat, aviation, and increasingly, leadership.
It is not a linear checklist. It is a loop, designed to be repeated, adapted, and refined.
Gather data from your environment. Listen, watch, ask. What is actually happening? What is visible or measurable? In leadership terms, this means paying attention without jumping to interpretation.
Interpret what you are seeing. What context, experience, or bias might be influencing your view? What assumptions are you making, and what worldview might others be using?
You may be recovering from something highly disruptive, your emotions may be fully charged. This may be a time for self mastery. Robert Greene advises in Human Nature to: seek to know yourself thoroughly; examine your emotions to their roots; increase your reaction time; accept other people as facts as they are not as you wish them to be; and through all this optimise for thinking and emotion.
Pay particular attention when you are sure something or someone is wrong. Why would that be right? How can they think that?
Orientation is the most complex and personal phase. It can be affected by such things as: Cultural traditions and beliefs; Analysis and synthesis, Previous experience; Genetic heritage; and New information.
Ideally it requires your humility and openness to feedback.
Choose a course of action based on the best current understanding you can acquire. This need not be your decision alone. This does not need to be perfect, it needs to be appropriate, viable and testable.
In Clear Thinking by Shane Parrish, decisions are made about possible solutions to a problem that has already been fire-walled so as to define it. The aim here is to avoid the use of a solution that is looking for a problem it may not solve.
You may want to avoid a binary set of just two options, one of which may be obviously deficient and is no option at all. Instead seek at least three viable options to choose from.
Beware of indecision and the false comfort this provides you, at the point of decisions being required.
"In any moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing, the next best thing is the wrong thing, and the worst thing you can do is nothing." Theodore Roosevelt.
Consider the impact of something not going well. Ultimately the process of planning leads to an attempt to execute a plan. At some point some part of the plan will fail and the planning will enable you to pivot, adapt and replan.
Often as not you will have more time than some or you would like to think, so breathe and think
Implement the decision in a way that allows learning. Then return to Observe. What changed? What did we learn? The loop begins again.
Boyd’s brilliance was in recognising that those who adapt their loop faster—and more accurately—gain an advantage. Not through brute force, but through insight.
"Machines don’t fight wars. Terrain doesn’t fight wars. Humans fight wars. You must get into the mind of humans. That’s where the battles are won." — Colonel John Boyd (1927–1997)
Most workplace environments appear to reward quick action. They might call it 'Decisive Leadership' and trust in that as a popular trait, right or wrong (always beware when a word has an additional modifier because it needs additional explanation). Quick wrong decisions are more costly in time and money, perhaps in lives. Decisions which lack exploration, lead to rework, missed nuance, and broken trust. Leadership is not a race to the finish, it is a responsibility to understand and then to influence influence.
The best leaders I have worked with take time to scan, orient, and engage thoughtfully. They do not hesitate when the time comes, but neither do they rush to be seen to be doing something. The have the courage to appear indecisive, to give others the space they need to think, to build a consensus that will also lead to commitment and shared ownership.
The thing is about being the boss and giving orders all the time is that it is fine if you have the authority and if you are right. When you are wrong it is all on you, there is no we. We can only exist when you create followers.
Choose one situation—perhaps a conversation that has been avoided, a decision that feels complex, or a conflict that is simmering. Apply the OODA Loop:
This loop strengthens with practice. The clarity it brings can prevent missteps and restore calm when others feel pressure.
Align – Why shared understanding is more powerful than command. We will explore how to align people, priorities, and principles so that action becomes shared, not imposed.
Let us lead with EASE.
If this issue helped clarify your thinking, please subscribe or share it. One thoughtful loop can lead to lasting progress.