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A fire alarm rings. What do you do?... Do you wait for an action committee or act with clarity and speed? We dive into the real mechanics of critical decision making—from false alarms and incident command to a flooded manufacturing floor where seconds and amps collide. Along the way, we show how a simple, one-page SBAR (Situation, Background, Assessment, Recommendation) builds trust, cuts through politics, and keeps teams focused when the clock and the risk both run hot.

We start by grounding decisions in environment: timing, hazard, and the operating context. You’ll hear how to distinguish low-risk noise from true emergencies, how rapid communication—like pulling the building alarm—rallies people and systems in sync. Then we translate those high-stakes lessons to everyday operations where you have weeks instead of minutes.

From there, we widen the lens to strategy. Rolling 1–3–5 year planning aligns near-term ROI with longer-term vision, all under real limits like cash flow, capital approvals, and the painful reality of deferred maintenance. We talk about how to elevate unsexy infrastructure by quantifying risk-of-deferral in dollars and downtime. We also explore how AI now accelerates data gathering and forecasting while we still needing human judgment to read political shifts and market signals. Inclusive, cross-functional teams improve decisions by reducing blind spots, and psychological safety speeds the truth to the table.

By the end, you’ll have a toolkit for fast, fact-based decisions that scale from the plant floor to the boardroom: use SBAR to focus, evidence to persuade, and cadence to deliver. If this conversation helps sharpen your leadership edge.... follow this podcast, share it with a teammate, and leave a quick review so more people can find it.

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Presented by John Wandolowski and Greg Powell