Decision Lens Oct 28, 2026 · Washington, D.C.
FOCUS26 — Decision Lens
Wednesday October 28, 2026 The Square · 1850 K St NW, Washington, DC
The 2026 Theme

Decision Making in the Compression Era

Budgets shrinking. Timelines collapsing. Scrutiny rising. The operating environment for government decision-makers has fundamentally changed, and the way decisions get made hasn't kept up.

What's new isn't the pressure. It's the simultaneity: less time, fewer resources, and more accountability, all at once, on the same decisions. FOCUS26 is built around one question. How do you decide better when there's less time and more at stake?

What to expect
Peer Insight
Senior leaders sharing how they navigate constrained resources, complex tradeoffs, and real scrutiny. Cross-talk, not presentations.
Shared Problem-Solving
Sessions structured around the challenges this community faces. Making tradeoffs visible, building records that survive turnover.
Hands-On Exploration
Live time with modern analytical approaches. Testing scenarios and exploring what's possible alongside practitioners who go deeper.
A Forward Look
Where government decision-making is headed, from the people shaping it. Keynote perspectives and a conversation about what's next.

Better decisions come from the right people, in the right room, willing to work on them together.

FOCUS26 is a gathering for government leaders, practitioners, researchers, and policy thinkers who share a single conviction: that public decision-making deserves more rigor, more transparency, and better outcomes for the people it serves.

Decision Lens convenes the room. The community owns the conversation.

Featured Speakers

Michael Roberto
Keynote

Michael Roberto

Professor of Management, Bryant University

Read bio

Michael Roberto is a leading expert on strategic decision-making, senior management teams, and identifying and mitigating hidden threats within organizations. His research focuses on the interpersonal dynamics that often contribute to catastrophic organizational failures, such as the Columbia Space Shuttle disaster and the 1996 Mount Everest tragedy.

Through his work, Roberto studies how decision-making processes can be structured for success, helping senior executives build the consensus necessary for the successful implementation of strategies. His insights also help leaders uncover potential disasters before they derail their organizations’ goals.

Admiral Gary Roughead
Distinguished Speaker

Admiral Gary Roughead, USN (Ret.)

Former Chief of Naval Operations

Read bio

Admiral Gary Roughead, USN (Ret.) is a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy whose naval career culminated in serving as the Chief of Naval Operations, the senior officer in the U.S. Navy. In that role he was a member of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff. In his career, he held six operational commands and is one of only two officers in the history of the Navy to have commanded both the U.S. Atlantic and Pacific Fleets.

Ashore, he served as the U.S. Naval Academy Commandant where he led the strategic planning effort that underpinned the Academy's first capital campaign. He was the Navy's Chief of Legislative Affairs responsible for the Department of the Navy's interaction with Congress. Admiral Roughead was the Deputy Commander, U.S. Pacific Command during the massive relief effort following the 2004 tsunami in South and Southeast Asia.

Admiral Roughead serves on several corporate boards of directors, is a trustee of Johns Hopkins University, and chairs the Board of Managers of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory. He is the Robert and Marion Oster Distinguished Military Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and an advisor to the BGR Group and the Maritime Policy Center in Haifa, Israel.

Panelists

Speakers and agenda to be announced shortly.