The things we don’t do …
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I was talking to a manager about his plan to start a new feature while we are changing the system architecture underneath.
“Suppose we are renovating a house, making some major structure changes. Is it wise to start an interior improvement project in the kitchen at the same time?”
“Probably not. The work in the kitchen might be thrown away. More importantly, having two big things with dependencies on each other changing at the same time can slow both projects down.”, he said.
Then it occurred to me what defines leaders is not only what they do successfully, but also the things they consciously decide they will not do.
When the stock market is hot, some leaders decide to hire as many people as they can; some leaders reject to join the madness.
When people are going nuts on xxxCurrency, yyyVerse, Web x.0, or believe Tulips are the new gold, some leaders choose to stay away from the frenzy and stay sober.
Every time we say yes to a thing, we are taking the opportunity cost of not doing other things.
All these small decisions define our life journey.
There are always more things we can do than the time and resource that allow us to do them.
And there are evil temptations to test our character and value system.
As managers behind every project we launch there are many projects we decide not to so: because it is the wrong time, it is the wrong goal, or sometimes simply because we don’t have the right people or resource at the moment.
So pay attention to the things we decide not to do. They maybe more important than the things we decide to do.