My parents believed in the value of hard work. So, as kids, my sister and I had lots of chores. One of those was pulling weeds. Growing up in Arizona’s Sonoran Desert, pulling weeds was one of the chores my sister and I dreaded most. And to clarify, tumbleweeds are real. Not just something invented for cartoons and cowboy movies.
Once a year, usually after the summer monsoons, my dad would task my sister and me to go out into the scorching heat and pull the tumbleweed sprouts. Doing so early avoided them growing into a larger problem. If we were diligent, we would snap to attention and get it done on a single Saturday. It wasn’t too much trouble.
However, if we procrastinated, the chore grew larger each day — literally and figuratively. The green tender sprouts would grow by the hour. If we waited long enough, which we usually did, they would morph into thorny, chest-high, wood-like bushes. The initial chore akin to weeding a garden would grow into an exhausting multi-weekend sunup to sundown marathon.
I’ve observed the tumbleweed phenomenon in the workplace countless times. Leaders resist pulling the little sprouts of things they know will grow into larger problems. In their reticence to engage in conflict, have hard conversations, and deal with problems before they mature and fester… they allow little things to bloom into big things. Big things they’ll eventually have to handle. I know this because I’ve learned the hard way.
There’s another way problems in the workplace are like tumbleweeds. When a tumbleweed fully matures, it dries out, breaks off at the stem, and rolls away. When I was a kid, if my sister and I waited long enough, the tumbleweeds matured, detached from the desert floor, and rolled into our neighbors’ yards. Sadly, my dad made us clean those up too. We learned to never ignore problems in our own yard until they became someone else’s problem.
Unfortunately, in the workplace, as leaders, when we don’t deal with the problems that spring up in our yards, we often pass them along to other leaders. Sometimes it’s the next leader that comes in behind us and inherits all the unresolved issues we’ve left behind. Other times, it’s troublesome or poor-performing employees we allow to roll into another job — moving on without straightening out performance deficiencies, or not notifying the hiring manager of negative attitudes or behavioral thorns.
Leaders committed to leading graciously deal with the metaphorical weeds in their yard. They never let their weeds grow out of hand. They never let them roll like tumbleweeds to the next leader. Someone wise once told me, “You either pay now or pay later. It’s always more expensive when you choose to pay later.” My advice is simple. If you see weeds spring up in your yard at work… pull them fast. They’ll never be smaller than they are when you first notice them. And if you wait too long, before you know it, they’ll cover your entire yard.