Musings at Altitude

I’m a big time fan of progress, and I get incredibly frustrated when unneeded or even needed processes slow things down to a painful crawl.  At the most extreme times, I’ve been known to accuse those who seem to enjoy limiting any momentum in the organization of favoring process over progress.

But last week, I was looking out over a golf course thinking about my time as an unpaid greens keeper when I was in my mid teens.  One of the first things we learned was to take the governor off of the golf carts so we could zip around the course late in the day at a much faster and highly unsafe speed.  The more I thought about that, the more I wondered how an organization can allow a few renegades to zip around the business frameworks and get things done at a much faster and even unsafe speed.  By removing the organizational governors from those renegades, dramatic leaps can be made where small baby steps may have otherwise been taken. 

There is a risk, of course.  As folks in the organization see the fun that is being had by those leaping to new levels and delivering against incredible odds, more and more folks may want to be “de-governored”.  That would be horrible to those who thrive on process and get there thrills from the mandated bureaucratic flows of the organization.

But boy would it be fun!

And even more importantly, wow would incredible things get done!