BLUF: Gardeners prune & Landscapers raze
For those not familiar with military acronyms, BLUF stands for Bottom Line Up Front. It is the TL;DR acronym for the military, often used in blogs to get the point across quickly without reading the whole post.
Even though the terms or roles may not be familiar, I will attempt to use this analogy to explain two aspects of leadership and how embracing your green thumb (or a Green Door Consultant) as both your business’s gardener and landscape can help you become a more well rounded, effective leader. The comparison in my mind comes down to the vision and strategy components of leadership.
When comparing the two, a gardener often has a smaller vision. The gardener decides on what they want to plant, picks the right seeds, chooses the location for the plant, and begins the growing process. All along the gardener must ensure the plant has everything it needs such as: proper sunlight, proper nourishment, sufficient water, etc.
A landscaper on the other hand, needs to have a bigger vision for the entire project. Quite often a landscaper needs to either start completely from scratch or raze an entire area to build something better. This also requires the landscaper to not unnecessarily get their hands dirty working in the weeds while trusting others to do the day to day tasks. In this example, the landscaper’s best use of time is to step back and observe the overall direction of the project. This will ensure the cumulative effort of the team is driving towards the intended goal.
In similar ways, leaders need to have the skills of both the landscaper and the gardener. Most of the time a leader should be focused on pruning, strengthening, and nourishing an employee. It’s important to be able to help employees to grow to their full potential. Just like a gardener is meticulous and purposeful in treating every plant species differently, a leader must focus on treating each employee as an individual. While there are basic tenets of leadership that apply to all people, it should never be forgotten that a workplace is filled with an amalgam of people instead of one homogeneous entity.
When a leader is starting a new endeavor in landscaper mode, saddled with the unenviable task of razing a workplace, they must have a strategic vision to create the proper foundation for everything they want to build. Without that vision they’re prone to making the same mistakes they did in the past. This could lead to them potentially starting from scratch again in the not too distant future, delaying the achievement of their end goal.
Having a picture in mind of how you want a workplace to look is the first step. Vision is a vital requirement to determine what direction the business should grow. The power of this is brilliantly outlined by Patrick Lencioni in his best selling book, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team. In his book, Patrick says, “If you could get all the people in an organization rowing in the same direction, you could dominate any industry, in any market, against any competition, at any time.” This statement may seem overblown but the power of, dare I say an often overused buzzword, Synergy, can amplify the ability of a team to greater achievement than previously expected.
Because this post is not intended to be a full write up about vision, I will move into the final aspect of this analogy.
Getting a clear picture of where your business is versus where you want it to be is vital to determine whether you need to put on your gardener or landscaper hat. Some sections may need to be razed while others just need to be tended to a little more diligently. The difficult part of this calculus is being able to accurately determine from inside the business. As the old saying goes, “It’s hard to read the label from inside the jar.” Often a fresh set of eyes, trained to see, understand, and interpret which attribute is needed most is the key to successful change.
