Crossing the Rubicon
Today, 2,075 years ago, Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon defying the Roman Senate and uttering "alea iacta est" (the die is cast).
It would prove to be a fateful moment, signalling the start of civil war, the end of the Roman Republic and his appointment as dictator for life.
Caesar knew that once he crossed the Rubicon there was no going back.
The obvious direction for me to take this post is to question whether the current leader of the free World had his own Rubicon moment last week and that this is the beginning of the end of liberal democratic world as we know it.
But I will leave that debate for history to decide.
Instead, I wanted to think about how leaders decide when they have consulted enough and when to take decisive action.
This question is particularly relevant to me now as I have a number of clients who are facing significant decisions that will affect their businesses, staff, clients and themselves - but they have yet to take action.
One client has a new and very radical positioning and go-to-market plan ready to roll out.
They’ve done months of fine tuning, consulted with staff and clients, and tested on the market.
It’s a brave move and deep down they know it’s the right thing to do.
And yet, they are stuck.
What holds leaders back at this point is rarely a lack of information or homework.
More often it is fear dressed up as prudence.
Fear of the unknown.
Fear of breaking something that is currently working.
Fear of being wrong and having to live with the consequences.
Psychologists talk about loss aversion and status quo bias.
We are wired to overvalue what we already have and to exaggerate the risks of change.
At a certain point, further consultation does not reduce risk, it simply delays the moment of responsibility.
In my coaching work, the shift often comes when we separate readiness from certainty.
Certainty rarely arrives.
Readiness is about having done enough thinking, listening and testing to move with integrity.
We work through what is truly unknown versus what is simply uncomfortable.
We explore the cost of action, but also the quieter cost of inaction.
And we ask two simple, but revealing questions:
If you wait another six months, what will you really know then that you do not know now?
What is the cost of inaction?
Not every decision is a Rubicon moment.
But some are.
And when they are, standing still is also a choice.
Caesar crossed a river knowing there was no way back.
Most leaders are not facing armies.
But they are facing moments where progress requires courage rather than more analysis.
The die does not need to be cast recklessly.
But it does need to be cast.