Why The Right Decisions Still Create Chaos

I started a small fire in my sister’s kitchen this week.

Everything is fine, and the kitchen survived. My dignity did not. I will be hearing about this for the next 40 years, I’m sure.

Here's what nobody tells you about fires: putting them out is the easy part. It's the smoke damage, and smell that lingers.

I watched an executive team learn the same lesson recently, at much higher stakes than my little kitchen incident. They'd just done something that felt impossible: convinced the Board to kill a major initiative the company had spent years building toward.

It was absolutely the right call. And they thought the hard part was behind them. But just like I learned from the fire, the chaos actually started the day after the decision was announced.

Some employees were relieved because they had been questioning the direction all along. Others who welcomed the change found themselves untethered, wondering what came next.

This team had spent every ounce of energy in the boardroom, and left themselves no capacity for what happens when certainty disappears. Even when people want change, they lose their footing when it arrives. It’s just like staying in a job you know isn’t a good fit - you stay because it’s familiar - the devil you know.

Which is the part most leaders miss. Winning a decision and landing it are not the same thing. One changes strategy. The other helps bring people along with where they’re going.

The work starts after the announcement, not before it. It means protecting enough capacity to explain the "why" again in one-on-one conversations, and to let people feel relief and uncertainty at the same time without treating it as resistance.