Avoiding Blankets & Bandaids

Challenges, issues, disagreements, problems.  They come up all the time in this world in which we live.  Whether in relationships, social contexts,the workplace — problematic situations arise and must be addressed by those directly involved as well as by any and all relevant leaders.  In an effort to minimize such scenarios, rules, policies and procedures are often laid out.  The more organized the context, the greater the likelihood that a  manual of some sort exists, a manual in which as many eventualities as possible have been explored and thought about, and rules laid out for navigating said eventualities.  Which, on the surface at least, would seem to be a good thing.   When it comes to practical application, however, there’s a way that rules, policies and procedures can actually be a hindrance — and as leaders you’ve got to be savvy enough to know when such documents are serving the situation at hand, and when they’re getting in the way.

You see, no matter how far-sighted you are, no matter how broad a thinker you are, there is no way that you can create a rule-book, as it were, that will actually cover every possible challenge or scenario.  Why?  Because human beings are such a diverse lot that just by changing one person in a situation, you actually change the situation.  So, what might have posed a problem in a particular group dynamic, actually lays the groundwork for more smooth sailing in another.  If you change the rules based on the first, you’ll have challenges in the second.  This is why “blanket solutions” — like most solutions found in rules, policies, and procedures aren’t actually solutions.  They’re simply cover-ups.

The same can be said of band-aids.  There’s a way that addressing the “issue at hand” is really just a covering up of the symptom.  As a leader, your job is to deal with the symptom for sure, and you’ve also got to look beyond the symptom to the root cause.  You’ve got to implement (or cause to be implemented) a solution that actually addresses the problem itself, rather than just the outward manifestation of the problem.

Now, here’s the real kicker.  As a leader — as a really effective leader — you’ve got to find a way to look beyond the symptom (avoid bandaids) and address the root cause (the actual problem) without implementing a blanket.  There’s a way that you’ve got to be willing and able to address individual challenges within a larger context.  They go hand-in-hand.  If you simply implement a blanket policy, you negate the power of individual qualities that make a given situation unique.  If you address the individual qualities alone, you set yourself up to be constantly handling different versions of the same issue.  In other words, you’ve got another classic leadership paradox on your hand.  You’ve got to be able to hold the big picture, even while you address the issue at hand.  So what’s the solution?  From my perspective, tents.  That’s right, tents.  As a leader, you want to build a structure, a safe container that is big enough to hold the situation at large, and spacious enough to allow you to address scenario-specific challenges as they arise.  This, I think, is best seen as a tent.

Bottom-line:  as a leader you’re going to come up against problems.  They’re sort of par for the course.  If you want to be able to address and move on from them quickly, however, you’ve got to avoid both blankets and bandaids.  Build tents instead, structures that allow you to hold the whole picture, even while they provide you the space to address specific issues.