Anyone who knows me, know that I love ducks. I like to feed them, watch them, imitate them and I collect art from a couple of artists who use a duck as their primary subject. When I was in college, my friends and I would go to the park in the middle of the night to “wake up the ducks” simply to get a break from studying! If you have worked with me, you know that I use ducks as an example and that I personally love to get and keep my “ducks in a row.”
Unfortunately, life doesn’t always afford the opportunity to keep your ducks from waddling off in all directions. Sometimes your ducks scatter and you find yourself running every which way to collect your ducks. Leadership is that way as well. You may believe that you have everything in order, then, suddenly your ducks have changed course and you with them. You have choices: you can panic and frantically try to corral the scattering ducks, sit down and despair the loss of your ducks, get to work and systematically regroup your ducks, or find new ducks altogether.
Donella Meadows, the late expert in systems who probably was good at keeping a good perspective on her ducks, said, “Let’s face it, the universe is messy. It’s nonlinear, turbulent, and chaotic. It is dynamic. It spends its time in transient behavior on its way to somewhere else, not in mathematically neat equilibria. It self-organizes and evolves. It creates diversity, not uniformity. That’s what makes the world interesting. That makes it beautiful and that what make it work.”
As you lead today, consider how you respond when your ducks fall out of line. You may find that your future ducks in a row are far better than the ones you are hanging onto today.
Lead well.