If You Don’t Care, Who Will?
I have a confession to make: sometimes I litter.
Not big litter, of course. I’m not a neanderthal, hurtling down the interstate and hurling my Chick-fil-A sacks out the window. I don’t sneak across the yard in the middle of the night and toss my garbage bag over my neighbor’s fence.
But every once in a while, when I’m stopping for gas and dumping napkins and water bottles into the gas station trash can … every once in a while those suckers will fall out of the can and onto the ground. And I … well … I leave them.
Okay, maybe I am a neanderthal.
If I have an excuse (which I don’t) it’s this: occasionally, I’ll encounter a gas station trash can that has obviously not been touched in days. Its overflowing. The cans at the next pump are overflowing. And my self-justification is, If they don’t care, why should I?
Before you email me, I should. I should care anyway. And just enough conviction is creeping in as a type this that maybe … just maybe … I’ll stop this practice.
But this reminds me that as a leader, it’s my job to care. I need to care about the full trash cans. I need to care about the clutter. I need to care about the big vision. I need to care about the small details. I need to care about the deadlines and the inbox and the needed conversation and the quality of the meeting.
Because if I don’t care, I can’t get mad when no one else does.
