Indecision is a Decision: the Cost of Almost and the Courage to Commit.
Updated: 6 days ago
By Winslow Swart
Recently, a longtime client and mentee shared something with me that brought a smile to my face.
He was coaching a group of founders in his investment portfolio and found himself revisiting a conversation we'd had years earlier. At the time, his own leadership team had fallen into what I call the Ready, Aim, Aim syndrome.
Smart people. Good intentions. Plenty of analysis. And not nearly enough movement.
Years later, different leaders, different circumstances, same dilemma.
It's gratifying when something you've shared continues to create value long after the original conversation. But it also reminded me how persistent some leadership challenges really are.
We know a great deal about leadership. We study it, teach it, write about it, and invest considerable resources in developing it.
So why do so many capable leaders and organizations still struggle to turn what they know into what they do?
Welcome to the dilemmas of leadership.
The inner game of commitment
Years ago, I had the privilege of serving as an inner-game coach and sensei to San Antonio Spurs players David Robinson and Sean Elliott during the period leading up to the franchise's first NBA championship.
The work wasn't simply about performance. It was about the person behind the performance. Focus. Confidence. Ego. Resilience. The ability to remain centered, grounded, and driven when the stakes were high and the outcomes uncertain.
These distinctions are just as relevant in a boardroom as they are on a basketball court.
I was reminded of this watching Victor Wembanyama discuss something Gregg Popovich had taught him in a 60 Minutes interview.
The essential lesson was about keeping success and failure in perspective. When you win, it's not entirely because of you. When you lose, it's not entirely because of you either.
Think about what that means for leadership.
If every decision becomes a personal referendum on our intelligence, competence, or reputation, we're going to have a difficult time making consequential choices.
We become invested in being right rather than getting it right.
And sometimes, without recognizing it, we begin protecting our egos instead of advancing our organizations.
There's a tremendous freedom in understanding that success doesn't make us infallible and failure doesn't make us inadequate.
It allows us to take responsible risks, learn, adjust, and move forward.
Confidence isn't knowing you're going to succeed. It's knowing you can deal with what happens next.
That's the inner game of leadership.
When Two Good Ideas Collide
Leadership would be considerably easier if every challenge came with a clearly right answer and an obviously wrong one.
Most don't.
We're encouraged to move boldly, but warned against acting prematurely.
We want innovation, but we also need stability.
We value consensus, but expect decisive leadership.
We celebrate breakthroughs, yet struggle to sustain transformation.
These aren't necessarily contradictions. They're competing demands that require judgment.
And judgment is where leadership gets interesting.
Consider a few of the dilemmas I encounter repeatedly in my work.
Breakthrough versus transformation
I love a good breakthrough.
Having witnessed them in executive retreats, leadership development programs, strategic planning sessions, and conversations where someone suddenly sees something they couldn't see before.
You can almost feel the energy shift in the room.
New possibilities emerge. Old assumptions get challenged. People become genuinely excited about what comes next.
It's powerful.
A breakthrough changes how we see something. Provided we don't confuse that moment with the result we're actually trying to create.
Transformation changes what we do about it.
I've facilitated sessions where participants leave energized, aligned, and committed to a compelling new direction.
Then comes Monday morning.
The inbox fills. The meetings resume. Familiar pressures return. And before long, yesterday's breakthrough is competing with yesterday's habits.
This is where the real work begins.
In the martial arts, we speak of zanshin: sustained awareness, focus, and intention beyond the immediate action.
For leaders, the distinction is equally important. The breakthrough is not the finish line. What we sustain afterward determines whether anything meaningful has changed.
Action versus inaction: both are choices
We often talk about action as a decision and inaction as the absence of one. But choosing not to move has consequences too. Opportunities expire. Teams interpret silence. Competitors advance. Unresolved problems quietly become accepted conditions.
Of course, restraint can be strategic. Not every situation calls for immediate intervention. The distinction lies in whether we are deliberately waiting for a reason—or avoiding the discomfort of commitment.
Inaction is not necessarily neutral. It is often a decision made without acknowledging that a decision has been made.
Ready, Aim, Aim—or Ready, Fire, Aim?
The first is reckless. The second, paralyzing.
Some leaders move before they've adequately considered the consequences. Others continue evaluating long after they have enough information to take a responsible first step.
And here's the uncomfortable part.
Both can feel like leadership.
The decisive leader feels productive because something is happening. The cautious leader feels responsible because every possibility is being considered.
But activity isn't necessarily progress, and deliberation isn't necessarily wisdom.
The question isn't simply whether to act or wait.
It's whether we understand what we're risking, what we need to know, and what we can only discover by moving forward.
Not every decision requires a leap of faith. Sometimes it requires a small, intelligent experiment.
Sometimes the next step is reversible.
Sometimes the cost of waiting is greater than the cost of getting something wrong.
And sometimes restraint is exactly the right decision.
The distinction is whether we're exercising judgment or avoiding commitment.
Clarity versus certainty
This may be one of the most consequential distinctions in leadership.
Working with leaders who want just a little more information, another assessment, one more stakeholder conversation, or another round of strategic review before making a decision.
Sometimes that's appropriate.
But sometimes what they're really waiting for is certainty.
And certainty isn't coming.
Clarity means understanding where we're trying to go, why it matters, what we know, what we don't know, and what we're prepared to do next.
Certainty suggests we can somehow eliminate the possibility of being wrong.
We can't.
Leadership requires the confidence to move with sufficient clarity and the humility to adjust as new information emerges.
We don't need to know everything to do something meaningful.
Conviction versus consensus
I make my living, in part, bringing people together to think, challenge, collaborate, and align.
I believe deeply in participation.
People are more likely to support what they've helped create. Different perspectives expose blind spots, improve decisions, and strengthen commitment.
But I've also watched consensus become an elegant way to avoid accountability.
Another meeting. Another round of feedback. Another opportunity to revisit a decision that everyone thought had already been made.
At some point, someone has to own the decision.
Good leadership creates space for disagreement without allowing disagreement to become a permanent veto.
Listen broadly. Challenge assumptions. Invite dissent.
Then decide.
Because a team can be fully heard without everyone getting their preferred outcome.
And alignment doesn't always require unanimity.
The Comfort Zone Has Excellent Public Relations
We talk a great deal about getting out of our comfort zones.
It's become such a familiar expression that we've almost stripped it of meaning.
Yet organizations are remarkably skilled at making the familiar appear prudent.
We call it protecting the culture. Respecting the process. Managing risk. Maintaining continuity.
Sometimes that's exactly what we're doing.
Other times, we're defending habits and assumptions that have long outlived their usefulness.
The real leadership challenge is knowing the difference.
What deserves to be preserved? What needs to evolve? What are we reluctant to challenge simply because it has always been done that way?
Growth doesn't require disruption for its own sake.
But it does require the willingness to become uncomfortable with what we've come to accept.
And that begins with the leader, not the organization chart.
When Thinking Becomes a Substitute for Progress
Here's a reality I've become increasingly conscious of in my work as an organizational development consultant, facilitator, and coach.
Organizations can become extraordinarily good at discussing change without actually changing much of anything.
They meet. They assess. They evaluate. They plan. They reconsider. They commission another study. They schedule another meeting.
And everyone stays busy.
Now, I believe in good thinking. I believe in assessment, strategic planning, meaningful dialogue, and rigorous examination of alternatives. Much of my professional life has been dedicated to helping organizations do these things well.
But there's a distinction I keep coming back to.
Thinking about doing something is not the same as doing it.
And being busy with the process is not the same as creating the result.
There's an interesting tension in the work I do.
As a consultant and facilitator, I'm typically engaged because something needs to happen. A strategy needs to take shape. A team needs to function differently. Leaders need to grow. An organization needs to move from where it is to where it intends to be.
My value is ultimately tied to what changes.
Yet many of the leaders and organizations I work with operate in environments where the meetings continue, the reports get written, the calendars stay full, and compensation continues whether meaningful progress occurs or not.
That's not a criticism of the people. It's a challenge to the systems, expectations, and habits we've normalized.
We can mistake the machinery of management for the practice of leadership.
And the more sophisticated that machinery becomes, the easier it can be to confuse motion with movement.
I don't want to be the consultant who simply helps an organization have a better meeting.
I want the meeting to matter.
I want the thinking to lead somewhere.
I want people to leave not merely inspired or aligned, but prepared to make commitments that change something.
This is where facilitation becomes more than managing a conversation. It's about challenging the thinking, assumptions, and behaviors that stand between intention and impact.
Sometimes the most valuable contribution I can make isn't another framework or another question that opens up the discussion.
It's the question that brings it to a point of commitment:
So, what are we actually going to do?
And perhaps more importantly, who's going to own it?
The Courage to Commit
I've come to believe that much of leadership development is really about helping people become more capable of confronting themselves.
Their assumptions. Their fears. Their need to be right. Their reluctance to disappoint. Their attachment to familiar ways of operating.
And yes, their occasional tendency to confuse thinking with doing.
That's not to suggest that every decision should be made quickly or that hesitation is inherently a weakness.
There are times when patience is wisdom. When more information matters. When the responsible choice is to wait.
But there is a difference between choosing to wait and failing to choose.
And the consequences of both deserve our attention.
Opportunities don't necessarily remain available while we deliberate. People don't stop interpreting our silence. Conditions don't stand still until we're comfortable.
Inaction has consequences too.
The next level of leadership rarely comes from knowing more about leadership.
It comes from becoming willing and able to act differently.
To make the difficult call. To own the consequences. To learn without becoming defensive. To recover without losing confidence. To keep moving without pretending we have all the answers.
And to recognize when our pursuit of the perfect decision has become the obstacle to making a good one.
Indecision is a decision.
And almost is not an outcome.
