Mike Pelfini — 01 September 2026
In the AI disruption, leaders face competing priorities. Mike Pelfini, leadership coach, advises how to think strategically under pressure: asking fundamental questions, encouraging respectful debate, and setting aside time for reflection can help.
The challenges facing leaders today
It’s hard to be a leader in the best of times. In times of disruptive change such as we’re experiencing now, the challenges of leadership grow exponentially.
One way to measure the impact of these challenges is by considering the length of time CEOs stay in their positions. According to a recent article in Business Insider, the average tenure of public company CEOs was 7.1 years in 2025. That figure is down from 7.4 years in 2024 and 8.3 years in 2023.
A big reason for the increasing turnover, according to the authors, is the number of competing priorities and critical issues facing CEOs. The Business Insider article quotes McKinsey partner Kurt Strovik as saying, “[CEOs] always had to separate the critical few from the important many. It’s just that the critical few are almost double-digit [in numbers] now.”
A 2026 PwC survey of nearly 4,500 CEOs in 95 countries and territories shines another light on the challenges facing leaders. It found that a major obstacle to priority setting is limited time and capacity. The CEOs surveyed report that 47% of their time is devoted to issues with a time horizon of less than one year. They spent just 16% of their time on issues with a time horizon of five or more years.
This article examines some strategies leaders can use to resolve competing priorities during challenging times.
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How can leaders improve strategic thinking?
The leadership pause. One of best practices leaders can adopt in the face of competing priorities is the leadership pause, discussed in depth in an earlier article. It calls on leaders to set aside, and protect, regular periods in their schedules for reflection, personal development, and strategic thinking.
CEOs currently spend almost three-quarters of their time in meetings of one hour or less, according to a Boston Consulting Group report. Their attention is constantly toggling between text messages, email messages, and phone calls, leaving little attention bandwidth for deeper, strategic thinking.
Some of the most successful business leaders have deliberately set aside regularly scheduled times for deeper reflection and personal development. The list includes Warren Buffet, Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates and many others. The leadership pause can be a powerful antidote to an “always on” mentality that favors speed and motion over strategy and deliberation.
Setting SMART and FAST goals. In our earlier article, “Goalsetting for Leaders, Employees, and Organizations”, we touched upon the FAST (frequent, ambitious, specific, transparent) and SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound) ways of goal setting as strategies for updating priorities among teams and organizations.
Encouraging healthy conflict in formulating strategies. Healthy conflict is the interchange of competing ideas in a respectful atmosphere. It is a proven means of helping leaders to shift priorities in a strategic manner that engages others in the process. By focusing on ideas, not personalities, leaders can foster spirited debates that challenge assumptions, test logic, and examine problems from different angles.
Teams that foster this kind of principled debate make better and more creative decisions, according to published research. By contrast, teams that avoid disagreement and debate tend to achieve lower performance, according to the Harvard Business Review.
Leaders can set the tone by letting team members know that disagreements are normal and expected. But they must also set ground rules to avoid personal animosity and keep teams focused on issues.
Asking the big questions about core values
A June 2026 article in the Harvard Business Review, titled Great Leaders Question Philosophical Assumptions, approaches decision making from the bottom up. The HBR authors focus on three fundamental questions leaders should ask before embarking on a course of action: First, Who are we (an ontological approach)? Second, What do we know (an epistemological approach)? Third, What is right (an ethical approach)? Used in combination with the leadership pause, goalsetting, and healthy conflict, asking fundamental questions can help leaders and their teams better navigate competing priorities.
Question #1: Who are we? The authors define ontology as, “The study of being or existence.” An organization’s ontology may include questions about why the business exists or what it hopes to achieve. The primary goal is to examine the basic assumptions that determine how the organization operates.
One example is Apple, which the authors say made an ontological choice when defining the relationship between the company and customer data. The authors write that Apple has declared data privacy to be a “fundamental human right.” They argue that Apple lives up to its declaration by making business decisions that restrict the extraction and sale of personal data. They quote Tim Cook as saying, “You are not our product. You are our customer.”
Question #2: What do we know? Epistemology is the study of knowledge. It asks what qualifies as knowledge, how beliefs are justified, and how factual disputes are resolved. Leaders have to make judgments about knowledge and truth every day. Yet often the basis for these judgments comes down to a “common sense” feeling rather than a principled approach.
Some companies have made epistemology a core principle. The most famous may be Toyota’s “Genchi Genbutsu,” which roughly translates to “go and see for yourself.” This approach teaches that the best way to understand a problem is to encounter it directly.
Toyota believes that leaders make the best decisions when they go to the place where a problem exists, observe the situation directly, and talk to the people involved. That is an epistemic norm built into company culture. Your organization may choose a different approach; the important point is to make a deliberate choice.
Question #3: What do we believe in? Ethics is the study of morals or principles of behavior. “Ethics asks what is right and how competing obligations should be weighed,” the authors write. They focus on the practical question of what an organization truly stands for, as opposed to following trends and chasing the popular path.
The article examines Budweiser’s ill-fated partnership with a transgender influencer. That decision provoked a backlash from one side of the political divide, which caused the company to reverse course. The reversal caused a further backlash from the other side of the political divide. In short, the company alienated consumers across the political spectrum by failing to start by asking what it genuinely stands for.
But values and purpose go far beyond avoiding public relations disasters. Purpose driven organizations – those that ask what they stand for beyond making a profit – regularly outperform those that don’t.
According to a Deloitte study, purpose driven organizations grow three times faster than their competitors, achieve greater innovation, and have better rates of employee retention. Values and purpose provide the solid foundations leaders and organizations need to navigate challenging times.
If you would like to learn more about how your organization can thrive in an age of competing priorities, please contact us.
About ForeMeta
ForeMeta prepares leaders for breakthrough transformation. Founded by leadership coach and Vistage Chair Dr. Mike Pelfini, ForeMeta focuses on the people who make the decisions—helping CEOs and leaders of small to mid-sized companies from all sectors to deepen their self-leadership, clarify their why, and expand their capacity to lead.
Through either thoughtfully facilitated peer groups or 1:1 executive coaching, ForeMeta helps leaders create new possibilities and more fulfilling results for themselves, their organizations, and their communities.
©Mike Pelfini 2026, all rights reserved.