Alea jacta est : The Long Purple Line by Dan Maslowski

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Today

The die is indeed cast. Supposedly Caesar uttered these words when he crossed the river Rubicon with his legions sometime long before I was born. Caesar violated the directives of the Civil Government of Rome and touched off a civil war in which ultimately he won. Let me hasten to point out I am not advocating a revolution in this post. I like my boss and my leadership. My musings are towards in entirely different leaning.

There are times when we make choices in life (work, family etc) where there is no going back. To cross the Rubicon is to embark on a bold, decisive, dangerous course of action. I want to pontificate (yes, I do mean the somewhat over inflated ego sense of the word in order to poke fun at my self) on the meaning of the word dangerous here. Dangerous implies that there is risk of failure and harm involved in the decision. Certainly when Ceaser supposedly muttered alea jacta este (also seen as alea iacta est for you Latin types out there) he recognized that declaring civil war was irreversible (just kidding doesn't really fly in this scenario) and that there was significant chance of failure and perhaps dire consequences. This sort of goes back towards one of my earlier blogs where I suggested that you need to be right. In Mandarin the word "crisis" is made up of two characters in Hanja that signify danger and decision point.

Chinese character wēi is danger

Chinese character ji1 in simplified form 机

Chinese character jī (in simplified form) is something like crucial moment, or significant point. Probably a bit like the moment you cross the Rubicon. A side note here. This really doesn't mean opportunity as the pop culture types want to suggest. Victor Mair wrote an excellent paper on this myth here. So, to my relevant point.

Regardless of whether you speak Latin, Mandarin or English, there comes a point where you must cast the die and see how things play out. Bold decisive leadership isn't a guarantee towards success. It is bold and decisive. Got to be right, but more importantly, you have to make a decision and let things play out. One more analogy and then I promise to make my point with clarity and simplicity.

As a young officer candidate in the US Army, I was crawling through the hot dry dirt of a Kentucky summer with an M60 machine gun in my hands. I was the squad leader (yes, I carried the '60. It was my weapon of choice) and we were assaulting an enemy strong point. We were pinned down with cross fire and starting to get out flanked. My TAC officer looked at me an said "Well, what are you going to do? You stay here and you will certainly die." That was a clarion call for me. I got the point in a brief flash and it drove a whole bunch of actions. I did the Sgt. York charge and we assaulted through the position. Clearly this was a training exercise and it taught me a lesson:

1. Skate or die. (Name the game...)

2. Cross the Rubicon and be bold and decisive.

The die is cast.