David McQueen | Decision Intelligence for Senior Executives
Decision Intelligence · C-Suite & Board

Your decisions define
your organisation.

Decide with intelligence.

Who this is for

You are here because the decisions in front of you — scaling, growth capital, transition — are the kind that cannot be revisited.

You want more than advice. You want a thinking partner who brings the rigour, the distance, and the honesty to help you decide well — not just faster.

David McQueen
01Judgement under pressure
02Consequence literacy
03Distributed responsibility
The Work

Built for the decisions
that actually matter.

My background is in finance and systems thinking which is why I approach leadership the way an engineer approaches a fault: find the pattern, trace it to the source, fix the mechanism.

The work begins with one of four diagnostic instruments each built for a specific pressure point. Transformation readiness, capital events, reputation intelligence, or direct advisory. What the diagnostic reveals determines what the work needs to be.

“Most leadership failures are decision failures and most follow a pattern the leader has never been shown.”
You arrive
Before the call

A major decision is approaching. Something feels off. You don’t fully trust your own read on it.

We find
The pattern

A structured diagnostic that makes visible how you decide under pressure — and where that pattern costs you.

You leave with
Clarity

Not confidence as a feeling. Confidence as a function — because you understand your own decision mechanism.

The Brave Leader by David McQueen
The Book
The Brave Leader

Decision intelligence for leaders when the pressure is real and the playbook runs out.

“Most leadership failures are decision failures that follow a pattern the leader has never been shown.”
2,000+ Copies sold
Advisory

The work takes different forms
depending on your context.

01· Individual · Confidential

Individual
Advisory

The higher the position, the fewer people willing to say what needs saying. Individual Advisory removes that constraint with direct access to counsel.

Explore →
02· Group · Structured

Group
Advisory

Group Advisory focuses on the quality of collective thinking under the actual conditions the leadership team operates in.

Explore →
03· Board · Governance

Board
Counsel

For boards at inflection points such as a new CEO, a capital event or activist pressure.

Explore →
GoogleMetaMercedesBMWBBCVirginBloombergHSBCLloyds BankShopifyOctopus EnergySoho HouseTate & LyleSSE
Speaking

Frameworks that stay in the room
long after the session ends.

Keynotes and masterclasses for senior leadership audiences navigating complexity, capital, and consequence. Not inspiration. Application.

These have been delivered to leadership teams at Google, Meta, Bloomberg, Mercedes, BBC, and others. Available as a keynote, webinar, half-day masterclass, or bespoke session built around your organisation’s context.

  • SignatureWhat Breaks Under Pressure
  • CapitalWhat Capital Costs
  • GovernanceWho Actually Decides Here?
  • TransitionThere is Always an Exit
  • ReputationCoherence as Currency
Also available: two masterclasses — What Breaks Under Pressure and The Reputation You’re Not Managing. Half-day formats built for your group’s context.
The Diagnostic

Understand how you decide
before you decide to
start a conversation.

The work begins with a diagnostic. Before the advisory relationship, before the first structured session, there is an instrument — built to surface the pattern beneath the pressure. If you want to understand your decision architecture on your own terms first, that is where to begin.

Explore the diagnostic instruments →

“Most CEOs I work with have a decision pattern they have never been shown. By the time they find me, it has already cost them once. The work is making sure it does not cost them again.”

The Quiet Work

Three bodies of thinking.
Written consistently.
For people who lead.

The Quiet Work is where the thinking behind the advisory is made available. Not theory. The patterns, questions, and observations that emerge from working inside consequential decisions at senior level.

01

Leadership

What it actually means to hold final accountability as a daily condition. The gap between how leadership is described and what it requires. The patterns that distinguish leaders who build something that lasts from those who manage something that persists.

02

Entrepreneurship

The specific pressures of building capital, conviction, and the decisions that determine whether an idea becomes an organisation. Written for founders and CEOs navigating the territory between ambition and execution, where the cost of the next wrong call is rarely abstract.

03

Decision Making

The conditions that degrade the quality of thinking at the moment quality matters most. The patterns that repeat across sectors, roles, and levels of seniority. How good leaders make bad calls and what the structure of those failures has in common.

The Quiet Work publishes when there is something worth saying. Read The Quiet Work →

Not every situation warrants
this level of work.

But if you are navigating conditions where clarity, consequence, and judgement matter more than speed or consensus — describe what you are carrying and we will go from there.

No pitch. No proposal sent in advance. Share your context and I will respond within 2–3 days.