Day 742 - Actions and Neglect

Finding balance

We spent the holiday weekend in the garden, for a rather belated spring sort out, pruning everything back, laying out new wire for the vines and roses to climb, and collecting up empty pots ready for planting.

It’s a funny thing: the garden thrives here whatever I do in it, but left to it’s own devices, it becomes wild, overgrown, at best shared with the creatures who lives there. And there are plenty: a fox, some mice, blue tits, robins, an occasional woodpecker, and a whole colony of snails.

At times though, when enthusiasm overcomes me (and avoiding the nests, I wrestle the garden under control, whereupon it briefly becomes tamed, manicured, although still shared.

There is no one thing that makes the difference: it’s a collection of small actions and neglects, which together define the state.

Use your sixty seconds today to consider the actions, and neglects of your leadership, and how this focus shifts over time.

This is a view that leadership is not a victory, but rather a continuous dialogue, and influence. But that we cannot tend to everything: instead, what we seek is a system in balance. Wild and tamed, ours and shared. But with space for everyone.