Flashback Friday: Let It Breathe
Every Friday I dig into the archives and dust off an old post. If you haven’t read it, it’s new to you!
At my core, I naturally drift to being a micromanager. I like to know that systems systematize and structures keep their structure. While systems and structures aren’t inherently evil, I recognize the dangers of holding tightly to the exacting standards that micromanaging brings. In fact, the last several years have been a journey out of strict control and into the beauty of letting the people and structures around me utilize their creativity to achieve the overarching goals of our team.
That’s why I really liked something I heard in a meeting earlier this week. While discussing a organizational problem with half a million solutions, one of my co-workers said the following (I’m paraphrasing):
In an organization this size, we have to realize that it’s not always going to go as smooth as we want it to. People won’t always do what we ask, plans won’t always go as they should. We can’t control all of it all the time. This organization is an organism, and organisms have to breathe.
That’s good stuff right there. It made me pause to think about a few areas where I don’t allow the organism to breathe…
Read the entire original post here.
