I walked through the pristine workshop admiring the creations of the piano artisan. Each piano, some over 100 years old, had been refurbished to its original glory, except one. The Baby Grand looked perfect except for a large spot on the lid. “What happened?” I asked the craftsman.

He stared at the spot as he explained, “I was working nearby and inadvertently dropped some solvent there, then I immediately picked up a cloth to wipe it off.” He took a deep breath as he continued, “In that moment I forgot the advice my mentor offered me years ago.” His teacher had told him “Whenever you’re working on a delicate or complex project and something goes wrong, don’t just do something – stand there.” He said, “As you can see, I didn’t.”

Get Going
Most of us got where we are by taking the opposite advice: don’t just stand there, do something. Get movin’ was great guidance early in a career when we were focused on producing and getting assignments done alone. But if you are in management and still saying things like, “I can’t let go because I need to make sure it is done right,” or “it’s faster if I do it myself anyway,” maybe now is a good time to put the fix-it rag down. Instead, stand there and involve someone who wants grow and needs to learn how to make things work.

Getting things done and done right will always be the key measurement at any stage of leadership. However, the higher you are in management, the more your focus needs to move towards growing others by not “just doing something” yourself. Studies continue to show that, at the executive level, 80% of your success rides on your ability to recruit, retain and influence people, inside or outside your organization, who will produce, plan and execute the work. In the leadership world where problems-to-be-solved turn into predicaments-to-be-dealt-with and conflicts to resolve can be turned into meaningful leverage points to get the best possible outcome, the idea to “stand there” and empower other people might be worth consideration.

What Happened?
If you are wondering what happened to that piano, I returned to the workshop a few weeks later and walked straight to it. The ugly spot had vanished. The surface was so well finished that I could not even locate the area where it once was. The craftsman was proud. Then he explained that he had tried to fix it himself and had wasted several days before finally reaching out for someone to help him. He said that in the end he had spent more time in that repair than the total labor time he had invested finishing the rest of the piano. “Next time I think I’ll stand there,” he said.

Journal Entry:
How might you and the people in your life benefit if you intentionally stand there more in your leadership and life?

When you delegate tasks, you create followers. When you delegate authority, you create leaders.
– Craig Groeschel , founder of Life Church

The best executive is the one who has sense enough to pick good people to do what he wants done, and self-restraint to keep from meddling while they do it. – Theodore Roosevelt, 26th U.S. President

As we look ahead into the next century, leaders will be those who empower others. – Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft

Don’t tell people how to do things, tell them what to do and let them surprise you with their results. – George S. Patton, U.S. Army General

First rule of leadership: everything is your fault. – A Bug’s Life

The parables of Jesus are rich with instruction and applicable to our work and lives in so many ways. Envision for a moment a slightly altered pronunciation of the word “Sower” to see how a CEO (Chief Executive Officer) learned the lessons of the farmer.

Letting Ego Rule the Day
He was moving fast up in his career path. He had just landed the top spot at an organization twice the size of his last. Intent on building a world-class organization, he hit the ground running and pulled his team together to talk about “the amazing things we did at my last organization.” He urged them to try some of these great programs that had worked there. There was a weak attempt, but not much happened. His last-place-ideas dried up like seeds on hard-packed ground and were carried away on wings of resentment.

Looking for Your Vision Out There
So the next year he went to the national conference. There he heard about best practices, benchmarking and metrics. “Wow!” he thought, “I now see the error of my ways. I just need to do three things: 1) get my team rallied around (OPI’s) other people’s ideas, 2) show them programs that have worked ‘everywhere’ and 3) convince them to spend half of their time tracking numbers so we can compare ourselves to others and win.” Initially his team seemed enthused, but still nothing much happened. So he had his team read a new management book every month to get even more ideas. As you would expect, these “worked everywhere” ideas did not take root in their culture. It was getting rocky.

Forgetting that Relationships Matter
This CEOwer was bruised, but not beaten. He had learned a great lesson. He took his team on an offsite retreat – listened to their ideas and let them create their plans. He supported and encouraged them. He even set up an incentive plan. He was pumped! The team was pumped! However, because he had spent much time and effort looking for outside answers, he had ignored his relationship with the Board. So when he presented the new team projects, they died a slow death, tangled up in the thorns of the Board’s bureaucracy and choked by a budget cut.

Finding Your Leadership Vision
The next year he took a different path. He took a few days off and wrote his leadership vision for the organization. Then he shared it with his staff and asked for their ideas and got their buy-in. This step of courage cured himself of his addictive FOMO (the fear of missing out). Because actually having a vision to work toward made it easy to just say “No” to time wasted in benchmarking and comparing. The organization set all kinds of records and created innovative processes that were so effective organizations near and far lined up to learn from his team. Those who have ears let them hear.

Journal Entry: You may not be a CEO, but you are influencer somewhere, be it at work, with your family and friends or in your community. Consider the principles scatter through out this little parable and think about how you might apply them in your leadership and life.

Book Suggestion: If you find you have tendencies to behave in ways similar to the CEO in his early times, I recommend you take a look at the book Margin by Mike Swenson.

He told them many things in parables, saying: ‘A farmer went out to sow his seed. As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path, and the birds came and ate it up. Some fell on rocky places, where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly, because the soil was shallow. But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root. Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up and choked the plants. Still other seed fell on good soil, where it produced a crop—a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown. Whoever has ears, let them hear.’ The Bible New Testament Matthew 13:3-9

Culture eats strategy for breakfast. ~ Dr. Peter Drucker