Strong Performance Can Make Bold Decisions More Dangerous

My MBA program made me watch a documentary about the legendary polar explorer Ernest Shackleton. After the Endurance was crushed by Antarctic ice, he kept his entire crew alive. The lesson: courage, resilience, leadership under pressure.

One problem: Shackleton helped create the crisis.

His previous expedition had taken him farther south than anyone in history, making him a national hero and earning him a knighthood. He followed that success with an even bolder bet: attempting the first crossing of Antarctica aboard the Endurance.

But business historian Martin Gutmann told me on a recent episode of The CEO Daily Brief that Shackleton ignored repeated warnings about dangerous ice and set out with weaknesses in preparation, equipment and training. Meanwhile, you have probably never heard of Roald Amundsen. He reached the South Pole and returned one day off schedule. Almost nothing went wrong.

Shackleton got the documentary. Amundsen got home on time. Apparently, “We prepared carefully and everything went well” is not documentary material.

Gutmann calls this the “action fallacy”: we celebrate leaders who manage crises and overlook those who prevent them.

Why Action Gets More Credit Than Restraint

The corporate version is everywhere. There is no press release announcing that the executive team considered a bold, expensive move and, after careful analysis, decided not to do it. Acquisitions, transformations, reorganizations, and enormous investments make headlines. Restraint rarely does.

That preference for action becomes more dangerous after a winning streak. Strong results give leaders more capital, more credibility, and more room to maneuver. They also create a seductive story: Our last bold decision worked because we are good at bold decisions. Before the winning streak, leaders have to justify the move: Why this? Why now? Afterward, the standard can sink to Why not?

The leadership test is whether you still demand the same proof when you’re winning. Some leaders do. Some don’t. A 2025 Strategic Management Journal study examined 415 acquisitions by 74 publicly traded U.S. manufacturing firms in the S&P 1500 from 2002 through 2018. The researchers found evidence that when performance rose above historical aspirations, CEOs higher in narcissism pursued more acquisitions while CEOs lower in narcissism pursued fewer.

The same success signal produced opposite behavior depending on the leader receiving it. Performance did not dictate the decision. It created discretion. The leader's motives helped determine how that discretion was used.

Success Discretion Is Not Necessarily Better Judgment

The alternative to overconfidence is not timidity. It is equanimity: keeping the quality of your judgment steady while results rise or fall.

A recession and a winning streak produce opposite emotions, but they create the same leadership risk: allowing the moment to dictate the size and speed of the response. Researchers behind the Harvard Business Review article “Roaring Out of Recession” tracked 4,700 public companies across three recessions. It turns out, boldness is bad in a recession. Companies that cut costs most aggressively had a 21% chance of pulling ahead afterward. Those that invested most aggressively had a 26% chance. The best odds—37%—belonged to companies that selectively reduced costs while making targeted investments in marketing, R&D and new assets. No boldness for its own sake, just a series of measured decisions. That is equanimity: refusing to let the mood dictate the strategy.

Constant Contact CEO Frank Vella showed me what that looks like from a position of strength. Strong results gave Frank the freedom to hold his course when others in his industry expected a move. As other technology companies imposed return-to-office mandates post-pandemic, he kept being asked some version of: They’re doing it. Why aren’t you? But he stayed steady instead of borrowing someone else’s answer.

When a Winning Streak Becomes a Risk

As a leadership writer, it would be convenient to keep dissecting other people’s decisions. Just for fun, let’s apply this analysis to my own company. I serve as chief strategy officer at Culture Partners, where our CEO, Joe Terry, faced his own version of this test after two successful acquisitions: Was another acquisition the right move or was success simply making it feel inevitable?

In 2022, Culture Partners acquired my company The Culture Equation. Five months later we acquired Paradigm Learning.  The Culture Equation brought some fabulous intellectual property (if I do say so myself), a keynote business, and me. Paradigm brought a solid team, game-based simulations, and a business-acumen offering. By our internal numbers, my business doubled in its first year, and Paradigm’s business tripled. Win after win.

Those results gave Joe real evidence that Culture Partners could acquire and integrate companies well. They also made him feel bolder when two other businesses came under his consideration. They both promised growth. Plus, as he said, “acquisitions have cachet. Success,” Joe told me, “can get a leader deal drunk.” And he was feeling tipsy.

I am not qualified to diagnose my CEO, and doing so in a SHRM newsletter would be an unusually bold career move. But when strong performance gave Joe more discretion, he did the opposite of the highly narcissistic CEOs in the study. Instead of charging ahead, he slowed down and filtered the decision through three questions — questions any leader should ask before making the next bold move after a winning streak:

Three Questions Before the Next Bold Move

    1. Would we still make this decision if our recent performance were merely average?

A “no” does not automatically kill the move. It reveals how much of the argument rests on the halo of current results. Joe’s answer was no.

    2. What specific problem are we solving before we choose the solution?

“Growth” is an outcome, not a precise problem. Joe concluded that both deals would primarily just buy more revenue—not solve a problem.

    3. What evidence would make us walk away — and who has the authority to challenge us?

Investors and advisers matter, but they are not the only people entitled to challenge the story. Joe believed that if the employees responsible for integrating the acquisition and the clients expected to benefit from it still could not see the value after hearing the case, their disbelief was evidence—not a communications problem to manage away.

He walked away from both deals. Prior success proved that Culture Partners could do another acquisition; these questions showed that neither deal cleared the bar. Too many CEOs would charge forward and tell themselves that skeptical employees “just don’t understand the vision yet.”  Sometimes that may be true. It is also exactly what a deal-drunk leader tells themselves before ordering another round. The CEO gets to announce the acquisition. Employees have to integrate it, and clients ultimately decide whether it was worth doing.

The Goal is Not Smaller Bets. It’s Cleaner Logic.

Acquisitions are only one place this dynamic appears. Apply these same three questions to other opportunities: an enterprise-wide AI rollout, a hiring surge, an expansion into a new market, a major capital investment, a companywide reorganization or a new product launch.

SHRM's 2026 Global Workplace Culture Report, drawing on 27,159 workers across 25 countries, describes “Strategic Architect” cultures as pairing long-term growth and calculated risk-taking with structured decision-making. Ambition and discipline are not opposing forces. Strong cultures institutionalize both. The answer is not smaller bets. It is cleaner logic.

Good Leadership Is Sometimes Invisible

Sometimes the best leadership decision produces no acquisition, no turnaround, and no heroic rescue. Nothing happened because someone exercised judgment before the crisis arrived. Terrible content. Excellent management.