Should you choose this film?

The Choice is the latest in a growing line of romcomsad movies that will make you cry and laugh in almost equal measures as you observe another romance blossom (and fade a little...) on screen. I almost got too grumpy with this movie as it seemed to be so clinically designed to make you reach for the tissues.

It does have all the usual romantic ingredients, freshly mixed like a salad at a barbecue. It even has Tom Wilkinson who pops up as a genial patriarchal vet who can bring animals back from the dead.  It was probably him and the great acting by the leads that kept me from being too grumpy with the film's 'formula'. But only just... It could and should have been a darn site more subtle that it was and I am left wondering whether Nicholas Sparks was altogether happy with the screenplay... It is a wet afternoon movie, or wait until the DVD.

Most of life and therefore leadership is about making fuzzy choices. Of course, there are moments when big choices have to be made (as in this film) but most of the time we can make choices that we can later unravel or paste over.

Leaders, perhaps by definition, probably have to make many big (and irreversible) choices that affect other people. But maybe also, some leaders create artificial conditions that magnify the importance of their decision making...? Perhaps leaders might do well to translate some of these big choices into fuzzy ones: there is leadership in that strategy too...

Have you made some 'big' choices that might have been better made as a series of fuzzy ones?

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Blog 158: in my 2014/15/16 series of blogs about leadership ideas to be found in the movies of our time. You can read here as why I began doing this (with updates at the end of 2014 and 2015). Please subscribe to this blog if you want to read more. Thanks. Click the label 'film' to see all the others.