Conscious Decision-Making: Why Your Spreadsheets Are Lying to You
In cybersecurity, we optimize for binary outcomes. In leadership, that binary thinking will kill your culture.
Originally published on my Blogger site on June 30, 2025. Preserved here on Substack.
In cybersecurity, we are trained to be binary. Traffic is malicious or benign. The vulnerability is patched or exposed. The user is authorized or blocked.
This binary thinking saves networks. But it destroys teams.
Early in my career, I was the leader who believed every decision could be optimized. I worshipped at the altar of the spreadsheet. If the metrics said “Go,” we went. If the KPIs said “Stop,” we stopped. It felt clean. It felt objective. It felt bulletproof.
Then I had to fire someone I genuinely cared about.
The metrics were clear. Deadlines missed. Productivity tanking. By every “objective” standard, they had to go.
But something in my gut, that unquantifiable data point, told me to pause.
Instead of executing the termination script, I asked a simple question: “What is actually going on?”
Turns out, they were navigating a silent family crisis. They weren’t incompetent; they were drowning. We didn’t fire them. We restructured their role, got them support, and six months later, they were our top performer.
The data told me to cut them loose. My values told me to dig deeper. Conscious leadership is the art of integrating both.
The Trap of “Spreadsheet Leadership”
Most leaders fall into one of two camps:
The Data Absolutists: They hide behind metrics to avoid hard human choices. They are defensible, but they often miss the context that numbers can’t capture.
The Cowboys: They shoot from the hip, trusting their “gut” blindly. They are fast, but they are riddled with cognitive bias.
Both are dangerous.
Conscious decision-making isn’t about finding a middle ground. It’s about synthesis. It’s realizing that a spike in failed logins is just a number until human judgment decides if it’s a brute-force attack or just Bob from Accounting forgetting his password again.
The Three Pillars of the Conscious Leader
If you want to move beyond binary thinking, you need to triangulate your decisions.
1. Data as Foundation, Not Dictator
Data tells you what is happening. It rarely tells you why. In security, logs are the ground truth of the system, but they are not the ground truth of the human. Use data to frame the problem, not to dictate the solution.
2. Intuition as Internal Intelligence
Stop treating intuition like magic. It’s not. Intuition is just high-speed pattern recognition. It’s your brain processing thousands of micro-cues… tone of voice, body language, historical context… faster than your conscious mind can explain.
Warning: Intuition requires calibration. If you are stressed or ego-driven, your “gut” is just anxiety in a trench coat.
3. Values as the Tie-Breaker
When the data is ambiguous and your gut is conflicted, your values make the call. This isn’t about a poster on the breakroom wall. It’s about the hard question: “Even if we CAN do this profitable thing, SHOULD we?”
The IVLD Framework: How to Actually Do This
When the pressure is on and the Slack messages are flying, you don’t have time for a philosophy debate. You need a protocol.
Here is the IVLD Framework I use for high-stakes decisions:
I - Interrogate the Data: What story do the numbers tell? More importantly, what are they leaving out?
V - Validate with Values: If this decision leaks to the press, would I be proud of it? Does it align with who we claim to be?
L - Listen to Intuition: What feels “off”? Is there a blind spot my logical brain is missing?
D - Decide with Integration: Synthesis. If the data says “Yes” but your values say “No,” the answer is “No.”
The Cost of Staying Unconscious
Leaders who refuse to do this work create predictable wreckage:
Analysis Paralysis: They freeze when the situation doesn’t fit a neat category.
Empathy Deficits: Their teams feel like cogs in a machine, leading to burnout and turnover.
Strategic Blind Spots: They miss the human element of security (insider threats, social engineering) because they are too focused on the technical controls.
Your Next Move
The next time you face a critical decision… a hire, a fire, a budget cut… don’t just open Excel.
Pause.
Ask yourself: What do I need to know that the spreadsheet isn’t telling me?
Conscious leadership isn’t about having all the answers. It’s about showing up as a whole human being who is brave enough to look beyond the binary.
The stakes are too high for anything less.
Resources
Data and Intuition: Good Decisions Need Both (HBR)
Why it matters: A breakdown of why the best executives don’t choose between data and gut—they merge them.
The Curse of Binary Thinking in Cybersecurity (Phil Venables)
Why it matters: One of the industry’s top minds explains why “secure vs. insecure” is a false dichotomy.
How Leaders Can Overcome Cognitive Bias (ASCD)
Why it matters: Practical strategies to ensure your “intuition” isn’t just a blind spot.