The Strategic Shift: Why True Leadership Happens Before the Pressure Hits
- Mar 6
- 2 min read
By Lasse Borg
In manufacturing, leadership is almost invisible. People don’t see the leaders behind a product, only the outcome of choices made long ago. Growing up as a fourth-generation entrepreneur and now working as a CEO, I’ve learned that strategic decisions shouldn’t be made under pressure. By the time a crisis hits, it’s already too late for real strategy.
Pressure doesn’t create better thinking. It simply reveals whether the thinking was done early enough.
The Power of Pre-Decisions
At Carccu, we specialize in high-quality packaging and flexo printing for the food industry. Here, decisions are never abstract. Every material choice directly affects food
safety, regulatory compliance, and brand reputation.
In such a high-stakes field, instinct is a dangerous advisor. That’s why I rely on "pre-decisions."
My basic scheme is simple. Decisions made in advance reduce the role of emotion once it becomes a dangerous advisor. Together with key stakeholders, we pre-agree on decisions. When the stakes are high, we define the scope, surface the real risks, and set clear rules to follow. Our decisions are based on data and agreed principles, not emotions or one-person calls. These include:
quality standards we cannot compromise on,
sustainability over the short-term profit,
and customer commitments that we will defend even at a cost.
In a high-stakes moment, I no longer ask 'What seems right?' I ask, ‘Which rule do we apply now?’ This approach removes the dangerous role of emotion and ego. It creates a space where we structure facts rather than spinning in endless, heated discussions.
Resilience in Action
Decisions made too late are the costliest, which is why true strategic thinking must happen before the world shifts. I saw this firsthand when Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine abruptly halted our exports to Russia, leaving us with 18,000 rolls of paper in inventory.
Instead of a panicked response, we applied our pre-established circular-economy principles, redirecting the surplus to a buyer in France to keep materials in use rather than in landfills. This disruption taught us to be even more proactive. We immediately built strategic buffer inventories of essential supplies to ensure the factory remains operational under even the most pessimistic scenarios. This is the "invisible" side of leadership: managing the supply chain long before it breaks.
Consistency Beats Bravery
Staying calm under pressure isn't a personality trait. It should be the outcome of a system. I believe that in modern leadership, consistency beats bravery every time.
To stay resilient, I follow three core principles:
Define values in advance, rather than on the fly.
Minimize emotion-driven decisions by trusting agreed-upon rules.
Prioritize the rules agreed on beforehand.
When I’m under pressure, I remind myself that urgency doesn’t mean importance. If everything feels critical, it usually means something wasn’t decided early enough.
In manufacturing and in leadership, consistency beats bravery. Setting decision rules ahead doesn't make leaders inflexible. It makes them resilient. In my experience, that resilience is exactly what helps a company steadily move through high-stakes moments without losing its core values.
Connect With Lasse
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