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The leaders' return to work: what will have to be decided, abandoned and reinvented
September no longer brings clarity. It brings deadlines.
The internal budget, the hiring frozen in June, the investment postponed to the second half: everything lands on the table at once. And the context itself gained no legibility over the summer. Deciding under uncertainty is no longer a crisis skill. It has become the leader's ordinary condition.
The question, then, is no longer when visibility will return. It is what you will decide without it.
The figures say one thing and its opposite.
At the end of May 2026, the Banque de France records 70,077 business failures over twelve months. A level that remains high, which the institution links to a deteriorated economic climate and to a succession of shocks that have weakened the financial position of some companies. Over the same period, more than 1.2 million companies were created in twelve months, a rise of 10%.
Two curves rising together. A country that creates a great deal and breaks a great deal.
Add the calendar. The September senatorial elections, a 2027 budget to be negotiated this autumn, a presidential election in May 2027. Eighteen months during which taxation, labour costs and support schemes will remain hypotheses, not data.
Many leaders draw the same conclusion: let us wait. It is the most expensive mistake of the season.
Waiting has a price, it simply appears on no budget line. It is paid in market share, in talent that goes elsewhere, in projects that lose their lead. A postponed decision is not a neutral decision. It is a choice, made by default, without anyone owning it.
Three judgements will not wait for visibility to return.
The eighteen-month course. Not a three-year plan; nobody will believe it. A short course, clearly stated, with two or three macroeconomic assumptions owned out loud. Your teams are not asking for certainty. They are asking for a direction, and for the right to know what it rests on.
The reversibility threshold. Every September decision must be classified: reversible, or irreversible. You move quickly on the first, you examine the second properly. A hire is reversible; relocating a site is not. This distinction does more for a company's speed than any additional committee.
The financial point of no return. At what level of cash, order book or margin do you switch scenario? Set the figure now, in cold blood. A threshold decided in September is worth more than an improvised reaction in February.
To decide is first to give something up. September is the only moment in the year when you can stop something without it looking like an admission.
Abandon the project you are keeping alive out of loyalty to the decision that launched it. It exists in every company. Everyone knows it; nobody names it.
Abandon the report no one reads any more. Abandon the committee that settles nothing. Abandon the idea that the second half will make up for the first without a change of method.
And abandon, above all, the requirement to carry everything alone.
This is where the data become uncomfortable. According to Bpifrance Le Lab's 2026 study, 49% of SME and mid-cap leaders describe themselves as isolated, against 45% in 2016; the share of those experiencing very intense isolation rises from 11% to 18%. For 65% of them, that isolation translates into permanent stress linked to mental load. And 75% have questioned the purpose of their commitment over the past twelve months.
The Ifop survey conducted in spring 2026 for the Fondation MMA des Entrepreneurs du Futur, among 1,000 leaders, completes the picture: 88% describe themselves as in good general health, but 85% report at least one physical or psychological complaint — 26 points more than in 2021.
A leader who is clear-eyed about the company's figures and opaque about their own condition. The contrast deserves to be looked at.
The quality of a decision does not depend on the volume of information available. It depends on the quality of the contradiction that precedes it.
Yet contradiction becomes scarcer the higher you go. The executive committee waits for the direction before taking a position. Investors judge the outcome, not the reasoning. Those close to you protect you. Nobody tells the leader they are wrong, at the point where it would still be useful.
Reinventing, here, does not mean adding a tool. It means organising a space where your reasoning is tested before the decision, rather than commented on after it.
Three questions are enough to test whether that space exists. Who, around you, can tell you that you are wrong without losing something by it? When did that last happen? What did you do with it?
If the answers are slow to come, the issue is not your strategy. It is your decision-making arrangement.
One figure captures the French paradox: in the 2026 Ifop survey, only 28% of leaders are supported or wish to be. The need is documented. Take-up does not follow.
At VISCONTI Partners, we are a collective of some forty leaders supporting leaders in post. We have run companies, made the calls, sometimes failed. We have no interest in your decisions other than their quality — which is what allows us to contradict you at the right moment.
Demanding listening, confronting advice. That is what we mean by sparring partner: someone who tests your reasoning before the market does.
This September, you will decide without visibility. That much is settled. The only variable still yours is the quality of the outside perspective that will accompany those decisions.
Preparing your decisions for the season ahead? Let's talk.
Visconti Partners presents its advice, inspiration, and case studies to help you unlock your potential and that of your business.
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