The Decision Was Not Hard. Admitting It Was Yours to Make Was.

By Mohamed Al Hashemi | June 25, 2026 | 2 min read

Holding the hard decision feels like kindness. It is the most expensive thing in the room.

The numbers already said it. Costs had to come down. That meant cuts. Everyone in the room could read the same slide. Nobody said it out loud.

Every week of waiting was a week the crisis kept growing. Every week the eventual cut had to be deeper. The delay was not protecting the team. It was raising the price the team would pay.

You are not avoiding the decision because you lack the data. The data is always there. You are avoiding it because acting on it means admitting the previous direction was wrong. And that admission has a name attached to it.

The hard decision gets made either way. When you wait, the cost is no longer yours to control.

Mohamed Al Hashemi is the CEO of Union Coop in Dubai and the author of four books on leadership execution and governance. Read full biography