Pile It On...Knock It Off!

Depending on your point of view, it'd be easier to knock the piled up snow off a deck rail or lantern top than it is to clean up a real or figurative list of things that have been put off since before the last snow storm. In these parts it hadn't snowed for some 300 hundred days. That by historical standards is unusual in itself.

Just days ago one was able to hike across a trail through the nearby river valley marsh on a sunny, typical brisk December afternoon. With a 10-day forecast in mind, the sense was this may be the last such hike for the season unless the forecasters were wrong.

When I opened the blinds to our rear deck this morning, it didn't surprise me to see that the overnight snowfall left added weight to the hanging lanterns and height to the deck rails. Perverse as it may be, one thought I had was to get out there and liberate the lanterns and knock the snow off the rails. The dilettante am I kept me from doing so.

However, it did occur to me that like a list of things that had appeared to accumulate overnight, so is the hazard of awakening one morning to realize that as many as 300-days worth of little things have remained undone.

"Procrastination is the Thief of time" is attributed to a number of different prominent literary figures over the centuries and American literary critic and educator E.D. Hirsch, Jr., who is best known for his Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know (1987) believes it is one of 265 proverbs on his list of proverbs that every American needs to know.

The big difference between a newly dressed snowscape and a leader's lost list is significant in this respect; the lanterns and rail have no need to be liberated from the accumulation while a list of even a dozen things left unfinished by a leader of others should be considered inexcusable.

THEY DON'T KNOW and IT DOESN"T MATTER

Admittedly, those that are being led may not have any idea of the number of things that warrant inclusion on this list but one thing is for sure, they know it when something that directly affects them should be but there is no visible sign that leads them to believe it is or ever has been. That's a bigger problem.

Over the years exhaustive research has been done and all sorts of remedies to cure one of procrastination or sheer laziness have been suggested. Today, we can still use the rather archaic tools of pencil and paper, notepads and such, or buy an elaborate Franklin© personal planner with calendars, color cards and stuff and beyond that go high-tech with voice recognition software and speak these reminders and "must-dos" into cyber-space. The issue with all of the above comes back to the same old thing; What to do with them then?

KNOCK IT OFF

Here's the deal; if you've allowed yourself to get away with piling things up that you know darn well should have been dealt with 300 or 3 days ago, knock it off!

We could re-circulate a 10-point "Best" list of things a leader can do to take care of business, the small and the great, but the truth of the matter is we all know what's on that list and simply need to be reminded that good and effective leaders manage to get bogged down too. Better leaders simply keep the lists short (yes they make lists) while adding and subtracting to them every new day.

Jim Naleid is a Life-long Entrepreneur, Change-Agent and Thought Leader, Managing Director of Naleid & Associates and Regional TEC (“The Executive Committee”) Chair leading a group of executives to become Better Leaders, Making Better Decisions with Better Results. http://www.linkedin.com/in/jimnaleid