One day in 1997, a package arrived at the Santa Monica office of a former comedian and talent agent named Chris Albrecht. Inside the package was a script for a pilot episode of a new TV show which told the story of a relatively successful family man named Tommy who was quietly struggling to make sense of some personal and professional issues.

Albrecht, who was now the senior vice president in charge of the premium cable network HBO's original programming division, and his second in command, Carolyn Strauss, were on the lookout for new shows.

But the Home Box Office team wasn't looking for just any new show. Albrecht's team had devised a plan that hinged on finding a new kind of television show with compelling characters. The kind of compelling character Albrecht and Strauss were thinking of transcended the likes of a crafty, but lovable teenager such as Mike Seaver of Growing Pains; the adorably neurotic singles on Friends; or even a gruff yet funny blue-collar housewife like Roseanne from her eponymous show. A “compelling character,” the way the original programming division defined the term, meant a character that was truly original—someone unlike anyone you'd find on any television network circa 1997. They believed that a lineup of shows like that would transform their division, and maybe even their company.

During the first few years of Chris Albrecht's tenure at HBO in the late 1980s, the fledgling original programming division—which included everything from boxing matches to made-for-TV movies—held a fairly low spot on the company totem pole. Not only was their offering a departure from HBO's bread-and-butter offering of replayed Hollywood movies, it was also headquartered on the West Coast while HBO's mother ship remained in New York City. That amounted to a double whammy for Albrecht's division.

Nevertheless, despite the California office being regarded by most of HBO's East Coast regime as the home of flakes and weirdos, the balance of power slowly began to shift westward. Fate first smiled on them in 1988 when the Writers Guild of America went on strike. The writers' protest forced almost all of the major broadcast networks to air nothing but reruns. Not so for HBO. Thanks to Albrecht's original programming division, HBO had a fully stocked inventory of fresh new programs to keep their lucky subscribers feasting on new plots and characters while the rest of the destitute viewing population scraped by on outdated episodes of M*A*S*H and The Brady Bunch.

By the early 1990s, HBO's new programs weren't just available, they were also regarded as pretty darn good even by the most discerning viewers. Comedies like The Larry Sanders Show, Arliss, and Tracy Takes On were attracting a respectable audience while simultaneously earning a little bit of critical acclaim.

But internally, original programming still had to fight an uphill battle for budget dollars. As one team member at the time, Susie Fitzgerald, explains, “You were always struggling to make the case that this was the way to keep subscribers. In order to eke out money [from the steering committee], we were saying, ‘We need continuing characters for the audience to fall in love with, so when they move or something, they don't just disconnect.’”

It was a classic chicken and egg scenario for the original programming team. To prove that a higher volume of compelling characters would increase subscriptions, they needed more money to compete with the major networks for more compelling shows. But mercurial CEO Michael Fuchs was reluctant to give them more money without knowing whether the increased budget would pay off.

Then in 1995, the chief financial officer, Jeff Bewkes, got the nod to replace Michael Fuchs as chief executive officer. Bewkes was much more open to the idea that original series could be vital to HBO's future success, so he began to crack open the coffers, even if only slightly. At the same time, a fortuitous innovation in lightweight satellites spawned a whole new distribution channel for HBO via the services provided by the Dish Network and DIRECTV, in addition to the cable companies. The newly expanded market for HBO enabled Albrecht and his team to pull slices from an even bigger pie of HBO cash.

Still, the original programming team's more-characters-equal-more-subscribers argument was difficult to prove to nonbelievers. It was merely a hypothesis. What they needed was an opportunity to prove their point beyond the shadow of a doubt. While some of the shows, like Larry Sanders, boasted respectable viewerships, original programming didn't yet have a homerun.

So when Tommy's story was literally hand-delivered to Chris Albrecht, it should have seemed like a blessing. There was a problem with the story, however. That problem clearly explained why the script landed at HBO's office in the first place.

Back then, cable channels simply could not compete with the budgets and significantly broader viewership offered by the major networks. Cable was sort of like junior varsity for the television industry—a demotion for the top talent. So for both financial reasons and reputational reasons, the best writers and their producers didn't want their shows ending up on HBO.

Translation: If CBS wanted a script in 1997, HBO didn't have a chance at it.

The good news for Albrecht and Strauss was that CBS didn't want this script. Neither did FOX, ABC, or NBC. That was also the bad news. None of them wanted the script because the show's hero possessed a tragic flaw. He was a criminal. While that may seem like a silly concern today, a lawless protagonist was unprecedented in 1997. Back then it was regarded as an indisputable fact that a TV hero, even a flawed one, must always be one of the good guys at the end of the day. Otherwise viewers will grow uncomfortable, the audience will disappear, and the show will die.

The original programming team faced a decision. On the one hand, they firmly believed that owning and producing compelling characters for subscribers to fall in love with would be the key to taking them to new heights. But in order to acquire that compelling character, they would have to cut ties with the most basic rules of their industry.

In the end, the team decided to give the show the green light with only one minor adjustment to the original script. Tommy would still be an unapologetic criminal. But Tommy would no longer be “Tommy.” He would be “Tony.”

When The Sopranos debuted in January of 1999, it changed everything. Throughout the show's six seasons, it would win 21 Emmy Awards and five Golden Globes. In 2012, TV Guide ranked it as the best television series of all time. In 2013, the Writers Guild of America named it the best written television show of all time. Almost overnight, The Sopranos transformed HBO from a second-tier cable TV network into an entertainment powerhouse at which Chris Albrecht and Carolyn Strauss' original programming division became the crown jewel. The dramatic spike in subscriptions to HBO following season one triggered a windfall of profits that surpassed the earnings of all four major networks that passed on the script—CBS, NBC, ABC, and FOX—combined. As of 2014, HBO and its juicy, industry-dwarfing 36 percent profit margins are the most sought-after property in the media industry. No less than 21st Century Fox, Disney, and Amazon are falling all over themselves to get their hands on what Bloomberg BusinessWeek called the “30-year-old cash-printing machine known as Home Box Office.”¹

Original programming suddenly had plenty of respect from HBO's corporate headquarters. And this was that special kind of respect that comes with a blank check for a budget. But perhaps most astonishing is the fact that a channel on cable TV—long regarded as the place where good television talent goes to die—instantly became a premiere destination for the most innovative writers and actors in the entertainment industry. The character of Tony Soprano was the black queen of diamonds for Hollywood's top creative talent. It was the current and future team members of the original programming division who immediately recognized Tony Soprano as an unmistakable turn signal.

Albrecht's airing of The Sopranos, in spite of the show's direct conflicts with the basic premises of programming success, inspired a bona fide revolution. It was to HBO what the Boston Tea Party was to the American colonists, what a Tunisian street vendor's decision to set himself on fire was to the disillusioned masses behind the Arab Spring, what the storming of the Bastille was to the Jacobins of eighteenth-century France, and what the Salt March was to Gandhi's liberation movement in India.

After The Sopranos opened the door, new shows starring complicated anti-heroes like Tony Soprano began flooding television. Breaking Bad, Mad Men, The Wire, The Shield, Dexter, House of Cards, Orange Is the New Black, and countless other series continue pouring out today in such a volume on so many different channels that it's hard to imagine a time not so long ago when this type of show simply did not exist.

And it all began with a decision.

When we hear the HBO story it's tempting to conclude that Chris Albrecht was just an insanely lucky guy. Time and again the chips just kept falling into place for him due to factors almost completely beyond his control. First, there was the writers' strike in the late eighties that thrust original programming into the spotlight. Then there was the replacement of Michael Fuchs with the much more vision-friendly Jeff Bewkes. There was the innovation in satellite TV that freed up more cash for HBO to place larger bets on more original programming. Lastly of course, we can't forget about the script for the most acclaimed television show of all time being literally hand-delivered to Chris Albrecht's front doorstep.

Obviously, the lesson here is that the big networks were run by myopic idiots and HBO was led by enlightened visionaries, right?

Not exactly.

Even the HBO team had concerns. They were nervous and excited at the same time. As Carolyn Strauss explains in Brett Martin's fascinating book Difficult Men, they had serious questions. “Could we have a show with a criminal as a protagonist? I remember sitting in a room with Jeff [Bewkes] and Chris [Albrecht] hashing through it: ‘Should we do this? We should do this! Can we do this?’”

After a private viewing of the pilot episode of The Sopranos, Chris Albrecht's nearly speechless response was simply: “It's really good.” Yet even after that glowing conclusion he still waited months, until the very last day before his option on The Sopranos expired, before giving showrunner David Chase the go-ahead to create the first season.

But wait a minute. Didn't The Sopranos present the very opportunity for transformation that Albrecht had waited almost a decade to receive? Why did he hesitate?

That's the funny thing about revolutionary change decisions. The decisions that inspire our companies and our teams, and that transform our careers and our lives, almost always seem obvious in hindsight. But they almost never feel obvious in the moment.

But fear not. The simple decision framework laid out in the next chapter can dramatically reduce the aspiring changemaker's pain.