It will be easy in the coming months to second guess Brian Cornell about his decisions to reduce headcount in Target’s corporate office and to experiment with Centers of Excellence as a means of breaking down silos and speeding execution. Based on reporting in the Star Tribune, the Centers of Excellence concept is a work in progress; this has critics questioning how layoffs will impact the company in the long term.

But here is the real question: Is it better for a leadership team to talk for months (or years) about the need for transformation but never act for fear of being wrong, or to act without being certain of the outcome, risking second guessing and the inevitability of unforeseen consequences?

On the one hand, successful CEOs have a unique and uncommon ability to understand their industry and competitive environment, and to craft strategy that can enable their organizations to succeed and thrive. But, this unique ability often puts them in conflict with stakeholders (board members, employees) who don’t have the same ability to see new possibilities or to tolerate risk.

The natural instinct for a CEO (who isn’t a narcissist) is to test their thinking with others and to try to help them understand the environment as they do. Unfortunately, in leading transformation, this is rarely successful. Faced with resistance and fierce protection of the status quo, the CEO then has to make a difficult choice between 1) not acting on their judgment and leaving the organization in peril; and 2) deciding to act by moving to a more directive leadership style without necessarily having buy-in from critical team members. Cornell has chosen to act.

Will Target be successful? The truth is nobody, including Cornell, knows. But I am reminded of Theodore Roosevelt’s famous quotation:

“It is not the critic who counts; not the [one] who points out how the strong [leader] stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the [leader] who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming but… who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if [he or she] fails, at least fails while daring greatly…”

Roosevelt assumes the motivation for a leader’s choices is unselfish and driven by a sincere intent to act in the best interest of followers. With that caveat, if more CEOs acted in accordance with Roosevelt’s admonition, I think the success rate for transformations in organizations would increase significantly.

For now, we must give Cornell the benefit of the doubt.

I look forward to hearing your thoughts. Email me at [email protected]