Leadership is deeply contextual.

It may entail creatively refashioning methods of problem-solving within the confines of established decision-making channels. In other cases, it may require openness to stepping outside those channels to create something entirely new.  And sometimes, it shows up as a willingness to begin within the constraints of one system before migrating into another. 

A readiness to adjust, refashion, or even abandon established decision-making expectations or authorities when seeking to crack difficult challenges can, of course, be perceived as incendiary or confrontational.

But challenging that reflexive response is vitally important. Constructively questioning, informing, enriching, or complementing public and private decision-making can widen the aperture of problem-solving possibilities. It can reveal the abiding potential of principled leadership to improve the ebbs and flows, the rhythms, the contours of contemporary life. 

And it can underscore the need to make a decision or pursue a path that was neither self-apparent nor easy: a decision that could only be made by balancing a gyroscopic tension between principle and pragmatism.