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When Your Instincts Are Lying to You

May 18, 2026

It was a dark night over Afghanistan. Kim ​“KC” Camp­bell, an A‑10 pilot with 100+ com­bat mis­sions, had just fin­ished refu­el­ing mid-air and was rolling away from the tanker.

Then her world turned inside out.

The tanker’s lights reflect­ed off thin cloud cov­er, cre­at­ing a kalei­do­scope of con­fu­sion. KC had lost all sense of up, down, left, and right. The moun­tains below were invisible.

She was com­plete­ly upside down. She just did­n’t know it.

“It was ter­ri­fy­ing — total sen­so­ry over­load,” she told me. ​“I had to will myself to trust my flight instruments.”

So that’s exact­ly what she did. She ignored what her body was scream­ing at her, stared at the data, right­ed the plane, and con­tin­ued the mission.

Spa­tial dis­ori­en­ta­tion is one of the lead­ing caus­es of pilot fatal­i­ties. Your body tells you one thing. Real­i­ty is some­thing else. And the ter­ri­fy­ing part isn’t the dis­ori­en­ta­tion — it’s the cer­tain­ty that comes with it. You’re not con­fused. You’re com­plete­ly sure you’re right.

I see this in CEOs all the time.

The Busi­ness Version

I was brought in to work with Luis, a man­u­fac­tur­ing CEO who could­n’t fig­ure out why sales were lag­ging. Two dis­ap­point­ing years. Smart team. Good cus­tomers. Sol­id mar­gins. No one could explain it.

When I asked his team to walk me through their plan for the year, it was metic­u­lous. New prod­uct fea­tures. Faster response times. A new sales automa­tion system.

Not one ini­tia­tive was about growth. Noth­ing designed to sell more units, win new cus­tomers, or enter new mar­kets. Every sin­gle project was about mak­ing the exist­ing busi­ness bet­ter — and they were com­plete­ly con­vinced they had a growth plan.

When I point­ed that out, they pushed back hard. These were impor­tant projects.

And they were right. The projects did mat­ter. They just weren’t growth. They were improve­ment. And Luis had con­fused the two.

This is what makes spa­tial dis­ori­en­ta­tion so insid­i­ous: improve­ment feels like progress. It is progress; just not toward growth. You can build a beau­ti­ful­ly man­aged, high­ly prof­itable busi­ness that has­n’t grown in three years. Refin­ing sys­tems and tweak­ing prod­ucts keeps exist­ing cus­tomers hap­py and pro­tects mar­gins. All wor­thy goals. But none of it actu­al­ly cre­ates more growth, which we define as more of the X or core unit with­in the business.

Once Luis saw it clear­ly, we shift­ed focus to gen­uine growth ini­tia­tives — new mar­kets, new part­ner­ships, new prod­ucts. Uncom­fort­able at first. Growth ini­tia­tives feel riski­er than improve­ment projects. But the busi­ness start­ed grow­ing again.

What Cre­ates Spa­tial Disorientation?

Past suc­cess. What worked before becomes the default. You stop ques­tion­ing it.

Gut over data. You trust your instincts even when the instru­ments say some­thing different.

Iso­la­tion. Nobody around you will say ​“I think we might be invert­ed.” So you stay inverted.

Speed. You’re too busy fly­ing to check where you’re actu­al­ly headed.

Play­ing Office. Too much time in the office and not enough time con­nect­ing with the cus­tomers you serve or the front line peo­ple who are doing the impor­tant work.

The Anti­dote: Trust the Instruments

KC’s move was deci­sive. She ignored what her body was telling her and deferred to the data. The instru­ments did­n’t have an agen­da. They showed reality.

For CEOs, your instru­ments are your num­bers, your pipeline, your cus­tomer feed­back, your peo­ple data. When results don’t match effort, go back to the instruments.

But here’s the oth­er thing KC did: she called it out and asked for help imme­di­ate­ly. She told her team she was dis­ori­ent­ed. She did­n’t try to qui­et­ly solve it alone.

Most lead­ers won’t do that. Admit­ting dis­ori­en­ta­tion feels like weak­ness. But every elite oper­a­tor I know does exact­ly this — because the stakes are too high to stay invert­ed out of pride.

This is where a trust­ed advi­sor, a strong COO, or a peer group becomes invalu­able. We all need instru­ments that won’t just tell us what we want to hear or rein­force what we already believe.

Chal­lenge:

Think about a sit­u­a­tion where you might cur­rent­ly be dis­ori­ent­ed — where your instincts could be lead­ing you toward a mis­in­formed deci­sion. What instru­ments can you use to recal­i­brate and get to the truth?

A few to consider: 

  • Talk direct­ly to the peo­ple clos­est to the situation.
  • Pull the best data you have.
  • Get a third par­ty to ver­i­fy or source addi­tion­al data.
  • Get an unbi­ased or con­trar­i­an per­spec­tive (from a human or AI).

Watch the full inter­view with KC below.

Addi­tion­al Resources:

Arti­cles

Pod­cast

Webi­nar

Book: The 4 Forces of Growth 

Book: Scal­ing Up

Book: Your Oxy­gen Mast First

About Lawrence & Co.
Lawrence & Co. is a growth strategy and leadership advisory firm that helps mid-market companies achieve lasting, reliable growth. Our Growth Management System turns 30 years of experience into practical steps that drive clarity, alignment, and performance—so leaders can grow faster, with less friction, and greater confidence.

About Kevin Lawrence
Kevin Lawrence has spent three decades helping companies scale from tens of millions to hundreds of millions in revenue. He works side-by-side with CEOs and leadership teams across North America, the Middle East, Asia, Australia, and Europe, bringing real-world insights from hands-on experience. Kevin is the author of Your Oxygen Mask First, a book of 17 habits to help high-performing leaders grow sustainably while protecting their mental health and resilience. He also contributed to Scaling Up (Rockefeller Habits 2.0). Based in Vancouver, he leads Lawrence & Co, a boutique firm of growth advisors.