I saw a quote today in an e-mail from a departing colleague.  He referenced Teddy Roosevelt saying “In any moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing, the next best thing is the wrong thing, and the worst thing you can do is nothing.”

It is a great quote about being willing to take chances and to make a change in your life even when the outcome is uncertain.  Our greatest progress often comes in moments when we have the least amount of clarity about what the results will be of our actions.

Change management is about giving people the intellectual ability to understand what is coming with reasonable clarity, but change happens when people are willing to take an emotional leap to commit to something new, even though they don’t know what it will feel like until they do it.  Think about some of the biggest changes you’ve made in your life – did you have all the answers before you moved on it?  Did you know exactly what would happen? Did it all work out as you planned?  Probably not.

The emotional commitment to change is tied to yesterday’s blog post on curiosity.  You have to be curious about what will happen, because you won’t always know for sure.  Sometimes you have to simply step up, take a chance, and make a decision based some parts on data and information and other parts emotion.  Striking the right balance is the secret for sure.  What has happened when you’ve made decisions based on the right balance of data and emotion? Anything exciting?  I’ll bet those were the best decisions you ever made, even if they were intellectually ‘wrong’.

I’m not sure riding a bull moose is the best decision Teddy ever made, but he probably had a ton of fun doing it!