As Baroness Heather Hallett delivered the findings of the COVID Inquiry, one line stood out to me; not for its political weight, but for its leadership truth:

“It is inevitable in a crisis … uncertainty [is] created by imperfect information … decision-making...centralised.... but bringing non-government partners inside the tent helps compensate for the uncertainty …” 
(Baroness Heather Hallett, UK COVID-19 Inquiry)

In that statement she names a reality that every leader; whether in government, business, policing, or the military:

• Will have to make decisions before you feel ready.
• Will need to act without full information.
• Will lead in the fog.

And the fog has consequences. The Inquiry has resurfaced many of the decision traps leaders can fall into when the world becomes unstable: incomplete data, unrepresented voices, political and social pressure, and the seductive pull towards groupthink or overconfidence. But these are not just government pitfalls; they are the universal fault lines of leadership in uncertainty.

The Nature of Leadership in Complexity

The pandemic forced leaders across systems to operate without:

• Total knowledge
• Clarity about what would come next
• Reliable, consistent information
• A full understanding of who would be affected
• Room to slow down and reflect

We saw, in real time, the difference between leadership on paper and leadership in action. Crises reveal not just competence, but culture. And that leads to a deeper question for every organisation:

How do you behave under pressure? not in theory, not in policy, but in the first hour of crisis? That hour is where resilience either shows up, or it doesn’t.

My Experience: Leading in the Fog of Real-World Uncertainty

Watching the inquiry brought me back to my own time supporting the national police response in Whitehall. During the pandemic, I worked on resilience planning and decision-making processes where we had to balance:

• Pace with accuracy
• Risk with public need
• Operational clarity with emotional pressure

At times, we were making calls with incomplete data, conflicting advice, unclear timelines, and rapidly shifting public expectations. That work reminded me, as did my military career around the world, that leadership is not about overlaying a pre-made solution onto a messy reality. It’s about making sense as you go and embracing multiple truths and paradoxes. Not knowing isn’t failure. It’s the default state in complexity. And the best leaders aren’t those who pretend they know; they’re those who can stay calm, stay connected, and stay adaptive while they learn and act.

What Organisations Should Learn From This

The business world faces its own version of crisis instability today: Cyber threats, financial volatility, talent shortages, reputational risks, and rapid technological shifts. The same fundamentals apply:

• You must prioritise at speed.
• You must communicate before you feel ready.
• You must act decisively with partial clarity.
• You must stay adaptive as the picture evolves.

Veterans, service leavers, and experienced crisis leaders carry these capabilities almost instinctively; not because they’ve been trained to follow rules, but because they’ve been trained to operate when rules break down. And this is why tools like the Strategic Orbits Exercise® matter. They don’t test the crisis plan; they test the people, the behaviours, the interactions, the unspoken assumptions, and the hidden dependencies. They reveal how teams actually co-ordinate, communicate and stabilise uncertainty in real time. Because resilience is not the plan on the shelf. Resilience is how your people act when the plan no longer fits.