Weedy

Springtime has snuck up on me again this year. I am still waiting for winter and the trees are blooming…and so are the weeds!

Fortunately, our yard doesn’t have a lot of weeds growing in it this year. I can’t take credit for that though. I attribute it to our lawn care guys who have been regularly treating our yard for the last two years. They have rehabilitated our yard after I almost destroyed it during my war on crab grass a few years ago.

Yep, I declared war on crabgrass. And I won the war – the crab grass was eliminated - along with significant portions of our entire lawn. It looked like I had adopted a scorched earth strategy in my campaign. It all began with my thought that if a little crabgrass pre-emergent is a good thing, then more would be better. Wrong. It has taken two years to recover from that war.

Seeing the pre-spring condition of our yard and comparing it to some other yards in our neighborhood (You do it too, so don’t shake your finger at me!), I am reminded of gardening expert Neil Sperry’s advice on having a nice lawn:

The best way to prevent weeds is to develop a healthy turf.

After 25 years in leadership positions, I have decided that’s a pretty good leadership principle too. There have been seasons when I spent an inordinate amount of my time and energy trying to pull the weeds in the organizations I was leading. And just like the yard, when you think you have cleaned up one area, another needs your attention. By the time you take care of that area, the first area is all weedy (is that a word?) again. As with the yard, it’s frustrating!

A better way to deal with this is to build a healthy organization to begin with. A good way to do that is to focus on what’s working well. Leverage the positives, grow those, and they will drive out the weeds. It’s difficult for weeds to take root in healthy soil.

Most leaders spend way too much time pulling weeds. Let’s look for ways to strengthen what’s working and build a healthy turf where our teams can flourish.