World Cup lessons

One of the many things I'm grateful to my wife for is exposing me to women's sports.

Beth plays soccer, and has been setting the alarm extra early the last two weeks to catch live broadcasts of the Women's World Cup soccer tournament in China. The competition has been tough and it has been fun to watch.

Of course we've rooted for the U.S. team, which after a slow start has played well. Until Thursday that is when it faced Brazil in the semi finals.

The game started at 7:30 a.m. U.S. eastern time, the same time Beth needs to leave to catch her train, so I watched the first half before I had to leave for work and Beth called in for updates.

There was a lot of controversy leading into this game because the coach, Greg Ryan, benched Hope Solo, the goalie who had held opponents scoreless for nearly 300 minutes, in favor of Briana Scurry, a leader on U.S. World Cup and Olympic championship teams in 1999 and 2004. But Scurry had not played in this World Cup tournament and has played little on the international stage since 2005.

Ryan felt Scurry's 12-0 record against Brazil would be an advantage over Solo. His decision caught the team by surprise and now he is getting hammered and second guessed because the U.S. lost 4-0.

I'm not qualified to debate soccer strategy, but his decision and the result got me thinking ? how important to a team are things such as continuity and chemistry? As a leader, when are you too conservative and when do you shake things up?

And once you've made a bold decision and you've failed, how likely are you to make another bold move?

Risk is a big part of the business world. It comes into play when picking technologies, partners and even which market niches to pursue.

What's been your boldest move and how did it turn out? Would you do it again? Post your story below.