day no. 15,166: where poor decisions outrank indecision

"Moral courage is the ability to make and carry out the decision regardless of personal cost. It is different from—and rarer than—physical courage. The cost of physical courage may be injury or death, whereas the cost of moral courage may be the loss of friends, popularity, prestige, or career opportunities. The burden of conflicting responsibilities in combat—responsibility for the lives of subordinates, support for peers, loyalty to superiors, duty to the Nation—can be heavy. Our educational efforts should lead potential leaders to work through the proper resolution of such conflicts in peacetime. Leaders often need to make morally correct decisions in combat, but there will rarely be time for deep moral or ethical contemplation on the battlefield...

An effective leader willingly takes on the risks which come with military responsibilities. In that light, the greatest failing of a leader is a failure to lead. Two steadfast rules apply. First, in situations clearly requiring independent decisions, a leader has the solemn duty to make them. Whether the subsequent action succeeds or fails, the leader has made an honorable effort. The broad exercise of initiative by all Marines will likely carry the battle in spite of individual errors. Second, inaction and omission based on a failure of moral courage are much worse than any judgment error reflecting a sincere effort to act. Errors resulting from such moral failings lead not only to tactical setbacks but to the breakdown of faith in the chain of command." -- MCDP 1-3: Tactics

Leaders must lead. They are privileged and burdened by the necessity of leading. To be a leader is to step out first. It is to take upon yourself the burden of other's responsibility to obey you.  

Leadership must have the backbone to stand up straight and decide. It must be more comfortable with being wrong than being passive. It must embrace initiative rather than indecision. It is better for a leader to misstep than to not step up. It is better to slip up than to refuse to step out. 

Leadership is lonely. It must make, on occasion, unpopular decisions. It must endure criticism, second-guessing and watching others pay the costs of your decisions. It must take into account what it costs others and yet still ask others to pay those costs.

Sins of commission are still sins, but you can point a moving object in a different direction. Sins of omission can be excused by saying, "Hey! I didn't DO anything!" But the obvious reply then should be, "That's the problem! You didn't DO anything. ANY thing would have been better than the nothing you did."