Decision Intelligence: How Great Leaders Make Decisions That Hold - Not Just Look Right

Most leaders believe they have a decision problem. They don't. They have a decision debt problem.

Decisions that look right in the room but don't hold in reality. They get revisited. Corrected. Re-explained. Costing time, money, and trust long after the decision was made. And most leaders don't realize it's happening until the cost shows up in execution.

Decision Intelligence introduces a powerful new framework for leaders who are done making decisions that look right but fail when it matters. Through the Decision Intelligence Method (DETECT, DECODE, DECIDE, DRIVE), Melissa Hughes shows leaders how to integrate data, intuition, and human dynamics into decisions that hold under pressure.

Drawing on 25 years of enterprise leadership across healthcare, technology, and organizational transformation, Hughes shares real stories from high-stakes boardrooms, go-live command centers, and executive conversations where the cost of incomplete decisions was measured in millions.

Inside, you'll learn how to:

Detect what others miss before it becomes costly. Decode what's really happening beneath surface-level alignment. Decide with clarity by integrating data, intuition, and human dynamics. Drive decisions that sustain in execution, not unravel under pressure.

The book includes practical exercises, a Decision Debt Score diagnostic, and a method leaders can apply immediately.

Featuring a foreword by Rod Gamble, CEO of Lighthouse Consulting, who calls it "the poetry of management books."

Decision Intelligence is not about making faster decisions. It is about making decisions that never have to be made again.