Managing Leadership^®

There are a variety of ways people deal with the larger, or even the more unpleasant, tasks in their daily lives. Some meet them head on and plow right through until they’re done, leaving plenty of open ground beyond the exertion to contemplate and concentrate on broader topics. Others take a similarly direct approach: they procrastinate. This, unfortunately, is what usually happens.

Still others break the assignment down into components that seem less daunting – perhaps even simple or, better yet, enjoyable. A problem with this is that some people find this to be a sort of prevarication, a reduction of a real problem into inconsequential segments. So, of course, rather than belittle the project, they delay progress in order to defend its honor. Michael Wade wrote recently about this; about why you should bite off what you can chew, and proceed one step at a time.

I used to be a big fan of the full-steam ahead approach. I never had much patience for the piddle-away at it crowd, and took no pains to hide that opinion. This is usually the best sort of set-up for a good lesson. Here’s one of the ways I learned it:

When I was young I went on a back-packing trip in the Sierra Nevada Mountains with a group of about a dozen other college students. We were in for several weeks, coming out only once to resupply. Each morning, those who were interested would have a meeting to plot out the route for that day’s walk.

One day we were nearing a pass, and would have to surmount an unusually large amount of elevation. The map showed two paths to our destination. I argued for the one that got the climb out in a stiff segment early in the march, leaving an apparently level walk the rest of the way. Everyone else preferred the other, which covered the rise in elevation more or less evenly spread throughout the day. Plus, they pointed out, at the midpoint there was a nice meadow by a stream where we could meet for lunch.

I relented reluctantly, packed up, and was the first one out of camp. When I came to the fork, I looked sadly at the path I had wanted bearing off to the left, but dutifully took the one we had agreed on, to the right. After what really did turn out to be a pleasant walk, I found the spectacular meadow, made some coffee, and waited for the others.

Of course, they didn’t show. Here’s what happened: The second guy out of camp hadn’t been at our meeting. Moreover, he thought he was the first to hit the trail. When he came to the fork, he consulted his map, decided on the route I had argued for, and made an arrow in the path out of rocks to indicate which way he had gone.

When everyone else came to the fork in the trail and saw the arrow marker pointing the wrong way, they assumed I had determined that they were going to follow my preference whether they liked it or not. They knew that if anyone had taken a particular path, everyone else had to follow – there was no alternative for safety this deep in the mountains. (I, of course, hadn’t marked the turn at the fork, because the choice had already been determined and wasn’t controversial.)

So, off they went, grumbling about my stubbornness. Their complaints turned in to curses as the initial ascent turned out not only to be miserable, but to be followed the entire rest of the day by exhaustingly uneven terrain.

I, of course, was lolly-gagging happily along on a perfectly comfortable walk, later to enjoy coffee in a magical meadow by a mountain stream, surrounded by rainbow trout, brilliant wildflowers, curious deer.

The rest staggered in to the lunch spot I had wanted to use on the steep path and, finding that I wasn’t there, continued on to catch up with me. Eventually, they completed the whole day’s trip and, seeing that I wasn’t in the camp we had chosen for the night, set out once again to look for me.

The way we managed to rejoin is another story, and the real moral probably has to do with keeping good intra-group communications. But I was struck by – aside from the irony – how smooth the route the others had chosen turned out to be, how I was able to accomplish the day’s task, engaging and enjoying everything around me, and how at the end of it all I was still alert, and even refreshed, ready for more; in contrast to my friends, who, following my route, were exhausted, miserable, and had taken away nothing particularly positive from the experience.

Follow Michael’s advice. Take large projects on in bite-sized pieces. You will not only accomplish the task, but you will likely be more effective and detailed, at the same time that you savor the experience.

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Today’s tip: Frank Roche, at KnowHR, has opened up an interesting discussion about what sort of bias to apply to performance reviews in order to help them become a useful tool contributing to the desired result – please stop over to see what he and his visitors have to say.

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Technorati Tags: task, project, Michael Wade, Frank Roche, KnowHR, performance review