Decision Making Under Pressure

Participants will:

• Explore common challenges associated with decision-making in today's marketing environment
• Understand how factors such as time pressure, uncertainty, and competing priorities can influence decisions
• Recognize the role of information, experience, and perspective in evaluating options
• Consider approaches that can help bring greater clarity and confidence to decision-making
• Reflect on how effective decision-making can support stronger collaboration and execution

David Edward
Founder, Chief Strategy Officer, Strategic Initiatives Group  |  Creator of the Performance Ecosystem

David Edward is a senior brand and leadership strategist who built his career inside some of the world’s most influential advertising agencies, including Ogilvy & Mather, Saatchi & Saatchi, and Grey Canada.

David likes to say advertising chose him. The realization came on a university field trip to Ogilvy, where he decided, then and there, that this was the place he needed to work. What hooked him wasn’t the polish of the ads. It was the insight into human behaviour and the profound creative ways agencies found to meet it. A fascination with what drives people never left him. It eventually led him to the Italian Renaissance, and to a deep belief in raising the human condition.

David went on to hold senior leadership roles in the agency world, before founding Strategic Initiatives Group as a brand consultancy. The work evolved from there, shaped by his client’s needs for aligned brand and organizational performance. The work was still about human behaviour. It had simply moved from how people respond to a brand, to how people respond to the conditions they work and live in.

That throughline became the Performance Ecosystem, shaped by David’s research into the Italian Renaissance, what made it possible, and the principles that shape the success of modern business and brands. It now anchors a broader belief he calls Human Brilliance: organizations get their best results when leaders build the conditions for people to do their best work.

When he’s not helping leaders find the conditions for better results, you can find David digging into Renaissance history or plotting his next trip to Florence.

Areas of Expertise

1. Organizational Performance and the Conditions That Drive It
2. Leadership Development and Decision‑Making Under Pressure
3. Brand Strategy and Integrated Marketing Communications
4. Culture as the Mechanism That Converts Strategy into Results
5. AI and Organizational Readiness
6. Executive Facilitation