Greetings! This piece is a refresh from the archives, timely to both the literal season of fall in the Northern Hemisphere, as well as an ongoing season of uncertainty. It’s also in the “Boss Talks” section, which is a segment of my ‘stack that is directed specifically to business leaders. If you’re here for my broader thinking, you can opt out of these sort of “advice-y” emails via the unsubscribe button.
In Northeast Vermont, where I now live most of the year, the interlude between the electric neon of fall foliage and the first snow is called "stick season."
I’ve discovered neighbors I never knew existed on my morning walks: houses and rusted farm equipment tucked away along the trails I've been walking for months, unveiled in the absence of leaves.
While I can see once-obscured homes, familiar paths are often hidden by a blanket of decomposing leaves. On morning dog walks in the forest, if I only look a few feet in front of me, I often can't see where to go. Josie, an otherwise skilled way finder, usually lags 20 paces or so behind on urgent investigatory dog business.
While the leaf carpet obscures my immediate steps, if I scan up ahead the contours become clear in the context of the larger picture. You should know these are not particularly well trodden paths! Living so rurally, we almost never see another soul, and yet, even without much trampling the path snaps into soft focus.
The other week I was talking with a client about the challenge of being caught in the scrum of the day-to-day. In the frantic season of fall, like many, they've been mostly head down in the work when it's easiest to forget to look ahead to scan the horizon.
The big leadership questions— What's ahead? Where are we going? — become obscured by the decomposing leaf matter of daily urgencies.
The leadership scan can feel like a huge project: a strategy summit, a 12 week plan. That we need to swing between a big process around planning what we're going to be doing or actually doing it.
What I suggest instead is to practice illuminating the path ahead.
My personal philosophy on hierarchy (this may surprise you: I’m not against it!) is that it tracks most usefully to sight lines. How far ahead are you responsible for looking? Company heads may look towards a year or three, while others only see out a few days or a week at most. While you might envision a mountain pinnacle, upon which some gentleperson explorer perches, windswept, I tend to think of the inverse: that one to five year view is the forest floor, over which all other activity occurs.
Whether you prefer a metaphorical forest floor or mountain peak, leaders have a perspective and sight-line that remains obscured to our teammates until we name it. We can find the path again while our teammates are scrambling in the dead leaves at their feet.
Illumination practice is about noticing and naming what you see, without necessarily solving any problems in the moment or having complete answers.
We often feel like we have to have the answers to name a problem or name what we're seeing, but we truly do not! Uncertainty is not a problem if your only task is to notice and name. "I think we probably need to sign somewhere between 3-5 new clients in Q1 2024” is a useful observation now even if how that will happen is a later problem.
So if you've forgotten to look up this past month, sit down with a pad of paper and scan that horizon. ( Btw, Even if you don't have a team, you can do this for yourself. )
What will the business look like in 3 months if nothing changes?
What bumps are in the road? What is around the curve that only you can see?
What can you see now, in this season, that was obscured during the last?
What is clearer? What is less clear?
Again, you need not know everything! Naming uncertainty can be just as fruitful as naming what you know.
And then, once you've made your observations, decide what's worth sharing with your teammates.
What would be worth putting them at ease about or tucking in the back of their brains?