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🪑 The Leadership Table Monday, March 23, 2026 | A Student of Leadership

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AI can analyze a thousand data points in seconds and generate recommendations faster than you can read them. But it can't tell you which decision preserves team morale during a crisis, builds the relationships you'll need next quarter, or honors the values that define your leadership. At 35 years old, Damola Adamolekun took over Red Lobster in bankruptcy with AI-powered analytics available at his fingertips—but his first major decision required human judgment that no algorithm could provide: refuse to bring back the Ultimate Endless Shrimp promotion that customers loved but had cost eleven million dollars. Data-informed? Yes. AI-assisted? Possibly. But ultimately human-decided.

When Every Decision Feels Like the Wrong One

In foodservice leadership, you make decisions under pressure constantly. The vendor didn't deliver. The health inspector found violations. Your best manager just quit. A customer posted a damaging review. Your food costs are spiking. Every single day brings decisions where the stakes are high, the information is incomplete, and the time to decide is limited.

And here's what's changed: You now have access to more data, faster analysis, and AI-generated recommendations that your predecessors never had. But what I'm seeing in foodservice leadership is that more information hasn't made decisions easier, it's made them more complex. You're not just weighing gut versus data anymore. You're navigating AI recommendations, real-time dashboards, predictive analytics, and still needing to make judgment calls that algorithms can't make for you.

Research from 2024 on decision-making under stress shows that when you're operating under time pressure, information overload, and high stakes, your cognitive capacity for careful analysis decreases significantly. And AI, paradoxically, can increase information overload even as it promises to reduce it. You default to faster, simpler decision patterns that feel decisive but are often suboptimal.

Studies of aviation accidents reveal that eighty percent are attributed to pilot error, and when those errors are analyzed, the pattern is clear: difficulty in decision-making under time pressure. Not lack of skill. Not lack of knowledge. Not lack of technology. Difficulty making good decisions when stressed.

Leaders face this same challenge. Not in the cockpit, but in situations where the wrong call can cost jobs, damage relationships, or sink businesses. And the pressure to decide quickly often overrides the discipline to decide well, whether that pressure comes from people waiting for your answer or from AI tools that make you feel like the answer should be obvious.

Damola Adamolekun understood this when he took over Red Lobster. The company was drowning. Bankruptcy. Massive debt. Locations closing. Customers and employees anxious about the future. Everyone wanted quick, visible action. The pressure to make dramatic moves was intense.

But he didn't make decisions based on what would look decisive. He made them based on what would actually work. And that required a completely different approach to decision-making than most leaders use under pressure.

The Three Traps of High-Pressure Decisions

Before we can talk about how to make better decisions under pressure, we need to understand what makes pressure-decisions go wrong. The research on decision-making under stress, combined with what I've observed in thirty years of foodservice leadership, points to three consistent traps.

Trap 1: Decisive Feels Better Than Right

When you're under pressure, making any decision feels better than making no decision. Action reduces anxiety. Indecision feels like weakness. So you decide, even when you shouldn't yet.

This is called "action bias," and it's been documented extensively in research. Under time pressure, people choose action over analysis, even when waiting would lead to better outcomes. The stress of not deciding feels worse than the potential consequences of deciding poorly.

Red Lobster's previous leadership demonstrated this trap with the Ultimate Endless Shrimp decision. They made the promotion permanent, despite warning signs about profitability, because doing something felt better than the careful analysis that would have revealed the true costs. Eleven million dollars later, the action bias became bankruptcy-accelerating damage.

When Adamolekun took over, the pressure to act was enormous. Customers wanted their favorite promotions back. Employees wanted reassurance. Investors wanted dramatic turnaround moves. The instinct would be to announce big changes immediately.

Instead, he said clearly: We're focusing on incremental changes, not complete overhaul. We're going to be methodical, not dramatic. That took discipline, because methodical doesn't feel as decisive as dramatic. But decisive isn't the goal. Right is the goal.

Trap 2: Complexity Collapses to Binary

Under pressure, your brain wants to simplify complex decisions into yes-or-no choices. Keep the promotion or kill it. Raise prices or don't. Expand or contract. Fire them or keep them. The nuance collapses.

Research on decision-making under stress shows that cognitive load increases when you're processing high complexity under time pressure. Your brain responds by reducing the decision space. Instead of evaluating multiple options with trade-offs, you default to binary thinking because it's cognitively easier.

But most important decisions aren't binary. They're multifaceted with trade-offs, second-order effects, and context-dependent right answers. When you collapse them to binary choices, you miss the better path that exists between the extremes.

Adamolekun could have framed Red Lobster's menu decision as binary: bring back all the old favorites or completely reinvent the menu. Instead, he did neither. He brought back some classics like hush puppies and popcorn shrimp that had high margins and strong nostalgia. He added new items like lobster pappardelle pasta and bacon-wrapped scallops to signal innovation. He killed the money-losing Endless Shrimp promotion but kept the brand's seafood focus.

Complex problem. Nuanced solution. Not binary.

Trap 3: Speed Overrides Process

When time is tight, process feels like bureaucracy. You skip steps. You don't consult people who should be consulted. You don't run scenarios. You don't check assumptions. You just decide and move.

But speed without process creates different problems than the ones you're trying to solve. You make decisions with incomplete information. You miss important considerations. You don't anticipate unintended consequences. The decision might be fast, but the cleanup is slow and expensive.

Research shows that under time pressure, decision quality decreases specifically because people abandon systematic evaluation processes in favor of intuitive shortcuts. Those shortcuts work sometimes. But in complex, high-stakes situations, they fail more often than they succeed.

Adamolekun could have moved fast. Cut deep. Make dramatic announcements. Show quick action. But instead, he established a process. Listen to customers intensively through social media and direct outreach. Analyze which menu changes would actually drive profitability, not just popularity. Test changes before rolling them out broadly. Build stakeholder support before announcing major shifts.

This took more time. But it dramatically increased the probability that the decisions would actually work. And in a turnaround situation, you don't get many chances to get it right. Speed is worthless if you're speeding toward the wrong solution.

THE AI AMPLIFICATION EFFECT

These three traps become even more dangerous when AI enters the picture. I'm not an AI expert, but here's what I'm watching happen in foodservice leadership:

Action bias intensifies: When AI provides analysis in seconds, you feel pressure to decide immediately because "the data is right there." The tool makes you feel like deliberation is wasting time when actually it's creating wisdom.

Complexity collapses faster: AI recommendations often feel definitive, which tempts binary thinking, follow the AI or ignore it, rather than exploring nuanced paths that integrate AI insights with contextual judgment.

Process gets skipped entirely: When AI makes analysis instant, leaders mistake AI-generated insights for completed thinking. You bypass the process of examining assumptions, consulting stakeholders, and stress-testing recommendations because the algorithm already "did the work."

This isn't about whether to use AI. It's about recognizing that AI changes the nature of the traps you're trying to avoid. The RAPID model I'm about to share creates discipline precisely when technology tempts you to shortcut it.

The Framework: The RAPID Decision Model

So how do you make good decisions when pressure is crushing your cognitive capacity, time is short, and stakes are high? You need a framework that's simple enough to use under stress but rigorous enough to prevent the common traps.

I call this the RAPID Decision Model: Recognize the decision type, Assemble the right inputs, Process with discipline, Implement with clarity, Debrief to learn. Five steps that work whether you have five minutes or five weeks to decide.

R: RECOGNIZE THE DECISION TYPE

Not all decisions require the same rigor. The first step under pressure is identifying what type of decision you're actually facing. This determines how much time and process you need.

Type 1: Reversible Decisions

These are decisions you can undo or adjust if they don't work out. Jeff Bezos calls them "two-way door" decisions. You can walk back through if needed.

Examples: Try a new menu item. Test a different scheduling approach. Experiment with a promotional offer. Launch a pilot program.

For reversible decisions, bias toward speed. The cost of being wrong is low because you can course-correct. Make the decision with available information, implement quickly, and adjust based on what you learn.

Type 2: Irreversible Decisions

These are decisions that create path dependence. Once made, they're extremely difficult or expensive to reverse. Bezos calls them "one-way door" decisions.

Examples: Close a location permanently. Eliminate a position. Exit a market. Make an acquisition. Change your business model. Make a major capital investment.

For irreversible decisions, bias toward rigor even under time pressure. The cost of being wrong is high because reversing course is painful or impossible. Slow down. Use more process. Get more input.

When Adamolekun decided not to bring back Endless Shrimp, that was irreversible in terms of brand positioning. Once you publicly kill a beloved promotion and explain why it was financially destructive, you can't easily bring it back without looking foolish. So he moved carefully, explained clearly, and made sure the decision was right.

When he decided to test new menu items like lobster pappardelle, that was reversible. If customers don't like it, pull it and try something else. So he moved quickly based on customer feedback and didn't overanalyze.

Same leader. Same situation. Different decision types require different approaches.

A: ASSEMBLE THE RIGHT INPUTS

Under pressure, you're tempted to decide with whatever information is immediately available. But available doesn't mean sufficient. The question is: What's the minimum information you need to make this decision well?

Critical vs. Nice-to-Have Information

For any decision, some information is critical. Without it, you're guessing. Other information is nice to have but not determinative. The skill is distinguishing between them.

Adamolekun needed critical information to decide on the Endless Shrimp promotion: What was the actual cost per customer? What was the margin? How many customers were coming specifically for this vs. it being incidental to their visit? How much revenue would Red Lobster lose if they killed it?

He could get that information from existing data. It was available, even under time pressure. So he got it before deciding.

Nice-to-have information might have been: Detailed customer sentiment analysis across every demographic. Competitive analysis of what similar promotions were doing industry-wide. Long-term brand impact modeling.

All potentially useful. None critical to the core decision: Is this promotion profitable enough to keep? The bankruptcy filings showed it cost eleven million dollars. That was enough.

Whose Input Actually Matters?

Not every stakeholder needs to weigh in on every decision. Under pressure, you need to identify whose input is critical vs. whose is optional.

Critical input comes from: People with specialized knowledge you don't have. People who will be directly responsible for implementation. People whose buy-in is required for success.

Optional input comes from: People who have opinions but no special expertise. People who won't be involved in execution. People whose agreement is nice but not necessary.

This sounds harsh, but under pressure, you don't have time to consult everyone who wants to be consulted. You have time to consult everyone who needs to be consulted. Know the difference.

AI NOTE: AI can process vastly more information than any human, but it can't tell you which information is critical vs. nice-to-have in your specific context. That's judgment. When AI presents 47 data points, your job is asking: "Which three actually matter for this decision?" Not "How do I incorporate all 47?" The technology creates abundance. Your leadership creates focus.

P: PROCESS WITH DISCIPLINE

This is where most leaders fail under pressure. They skip process to save time. But process is what prevents the traps we discussed earlier. The key is using a lightweight process that's fast enough for pressure situations but structured enough to improve decisions.

The 10-10-10 Analysis

For any significant decision, force yourself to project consequences at three time horizons: 10 minutes from now, 10 months from now, 10 years from now.

This prevents short-term thinking. Under pressure, you naturally focus on immediate consequences. What happens right after I decide? But the best decisions balance short-term and long-term impact.

Red Lobster's Endless Shrimp decision through 10-10-10:

10 minutes: Some customers will be disappointed. Some media will criticize the decision.
10 months: We'll stop hemorrhaging eleven million dollars annually. We can invest that in better food quality and restaurant improvements.
10 years: We'll have rebuilt Red Lobster's reputation for value without destroying profitability. We'll be sustainable.

The 10-minute consequences looked bad. The 10-year consequences looked necessary. When you balance all three time horizons, the right decision becomes clearer.

The Steel Man Test

Before finalizing a decision, state the strongest possible argument against it. Not a straw man version you can easily knock down. The actual best case for the opposite choice.

This forces you to confront your blind spots. What are you missing? What could go wrong? What valid concerns exist on the other side?

Strongest argument against killing Endless Shrimp: It drove traffic. Yes, it lost money per transaction, but it brought customers who might not otherwise come. Killing it could accelerate the decline rather than stop it.

That's a legitimate concern. It required a response. Adamolekun's response: Replace the traffic-driver with different promotions that are profitable. Bring back beloved items with better margins. Add new compelling menu items. Drive traffic through quality and value, not through loss-leader gimmicks.

If you can't steel man the opposite position, you don't understand the decision well enough to make it.

I: IMPLEMENT WITH CLARITY

Once you've made the decision, implementation clarity determines whether it actually works. Under pressure, leaders rush through this part. They decide, announce, and assume implementation will sort itself out. It won't.

Communicate the Why, Not Just the What

When you're under pressure, you're tempted to announce the decision without context. "We're discontinuing Endless Shrimp." Period. Move on.

But people need to understand why. Not because you owe them a justification, but because understanding why helps them implement effectively and builds trust in your judgment.

Adamolekun didn't just kill Endless Shrimp quietly. He explained publicly that it had cost eleven million dollars, that it was financially unsustainable, and that Red Lobster needed to focus on profitable value rather than loss-leading promotions. Clear. Honest. Direct.

Some customers were upset. But everyone understood why. And when you understand why, you might disagree but you can't claim it was arbitrary or thoughtless.

Define Success Metrics Before Implementation

How will you know if this decision worked? Define that before you implement, not after.

For Red Lobster: Success meant traffic remaining stable or growing despite killing the promotion. Food costs improving as a percentage of revenue. Customer satisfaction scores staying strong or improving. Financial performance moving toward sustainability.

With clear metrics defined upfront, you can track whether the decision is working and course-correct if needed. Without them, you're just hoping it works out.

D: DEBRIEF TO LEARN

Most leaders skip this step entirely. Decision made. Outcome achieved (or not). Move on to the next crisis. But this is where you actually get better at decision-making under pressure.

The After-Action Review

Thirty days after any significant decision, ask four questions:

1. What did we expect to happen?
2. What actually happened?
3. Why was there a difference?
4. What should we do differently next time?

This process, developed by the military and used extensively in high-pressure environments, helps you learn from both successes and failures.

If your decision worked, why? Was it good process or good luck? If you can't distinguish, you'll misattribute success and repeat mistakes.

If your decision failed, why? Was the decision wrong or the implementation poor? Was the information insufficient or the analysis flawed? If you don't know why it failed, you can't improve.

The discipline of debriefing turns pressure decisions from isolated events into learning opportunities. Over time, you get better at recognizing decision types, assembling inputs, processing with discipline, and implementing with clarity.

You don't eliminate pressure. But you get better at making good decisions despite it.

What's Happening at Red Lobster Now

As of late 2024 and early 2025, Red Lobster has emerged from bankruptcy. The company is showing signs of recovery. Customer feedback is improving. Traffic is returning. The decision to kill Endless Shrimp, which looked risky at the time, is proving to be the right call. The company is investing in restaurant renovations, menu innovation, and employee development.

Adamolekun's approach, methodical decision-making under immense pressure, is working. Not because he made perfect decisions. Because he made disciplined decisions using a repeatable process even when the pressure to shortcut was intense.

That's the lesson for foodservice leaders facing pressure decisions: Your goal isn't to be more decisive. It's to be more disciplined in how you decide. The RAPID model gives you that discipline.

This Week's Practice: Decision Type Audit

IDENTIFY YOUR CURRENT PRESSURE DECISIONS

Take 30 minutes this week to audit the decisions you're currently facing or recently made under pressure.

Step 1: List Your Decisions (10 minutes)

Write down 5-10 decisions you're facing right now or made in the past month under pressure. Be specific.

Step 2: Classify Each Decision (10 minutes)

For each decision, identify:
• Is it reversible or irreversible?
• What information is critical vs. nice-to-have?
• Whose input is essential vs. optional?
• If you're using AI-generated insights, which ones are critical vs. interesting but not determinative?

Step 3: Apply the 10-10-10 Test (10 minutes)

Pick your most important current decision. Project consequences at 10 minutes, 10 months, and 10 years. Does this change how you're thinking about it?

Then steel man the opposite choice. What's the strongest argument against your current inclination? Does that argument reveal a blind spot you need to address?

Next Steps:

For your next pressure decision, use the full RAPID model:
• Recognize the decision type
• Assemble the right inputs
• Process with discipline (10-10-10 and steel man)
• Implement with clarity (communicate why, define success)
• Debrief in 30 days (what happened, why, what to do differently)

Track how this changes your decision quality over the next quarter. You're not trying to be faster. You're trying to be better at making good decisions when pressure is high.

The Deeper Truth About Pressure Decisions

Here's what I've learned after thirty years of watching leaders make decisions under pressure: The ones who consistently make good calls aren't smarter or more experienced. They're more disciplined about process.

They resist the instinct to shortcut when pressure is high. They slow down just enough to use a framework. They recognize that decisive action without good process is just expensive guessing, whether that pressure comes from people, circumstances, or technology that makes them feel like answers should be obvious.

Damola Adamolekun demonstrated this at Red Lobster. At 35 years old, facing a billion-dollar bankruptcy, with everyone watching and pressure to act decisively, he could have made dramatic moves that felt good in the moment but wouldn't have worked.

Instead, he made disciplined decisions. Incremental, not dramatic. Data-informed, not gut-driven. Process-oriented, not action-biased. And it's working.

That's the model. Not heroic decision-making under pressure. Disciplined decision-making under pressure.

AI is the context we're operating in now. It provides information abundance and analytical speed. But judgment, knowing which information matters, which time horizon to optimize for, which stakeholders need to weigh in, that's still human work. That's still your work.

Use the RAPID framework. Recognize decision types. Assemble the right inputs. Process with discipline. Implement with clarity. Debrief to learn.

You won't eliminate pressure. But you'll make better decisions despite it. And over time, that compounds into significantly better outcomes.

That's what separates leaders who thrive under pressure from leaders who just survive it.

🪑 From the Leadership Table

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By Robert Adams • 30+ Years in Foodservice Leadership • EVP, UniPro Foodservice • Marshall Goldsmith Stakeholder Centered Coach

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