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Phrase: Call the shots
Whether you call them the top brass, boss, or head honcho, every organization needs a leader, someone to call the shots.
Being a leader is perhaps one of the hardest things in the world because no matter what you do, someone will second-guess it.
The sad thing is that the ones who condemn your decisions can’t make the big decisions.
They can talk the talk, but they can’t walk the walk because a leader who calls the shots often walks alone.
When someone calls the shots, they are the ones who take the initiative and decide how things should be done.
Being a leader is hard, and second-guessing is easy.
That’s why so many people like discussing politics, but only a few brave (or foolish) run for office.
While many people think they would like to call the shots, the reality is the pressure and weight of responsibility of decision-making would quickly become too much for most of us.
Often the easiest thing to do is let someone else call the shots and then condemn the misguided decisions they have made after the fact.
In the Russo-Ukraine War, we can see the value of delegating authority and allowing leaders at different levels to call the shots, even though it is very hard.
In the Russian military, only the higher-ups can give orders.
Russian soldiers tend to sit in one place and get killed instead of moving to a better position because they haven’t been ordered to do so.
Even on a low level, they cannot call the shots.
On the other hand, the Ukrainians learned to allow the leaders of smaller units to call the shots and adjust to the situation on the battlefield.
Calling the shots is hard.
Criticizing is easy.
Flesch-Kincaid Readability Test
This post is understandable by someone with at least an 8th-grade education (age 13 – 14).
On the Flesch-Kincaid reading-ease test, this post scores 69.
The easier a passage is to read, the higher the score on a scale of 0 – 100.
