Steps

No Bulldogs are puking.  That’s a plus (more here).  Garland Ranch Regional Park is a shorter drive from home than TouVelle Stadium was, and there’s only the eight railroad tie steps leading from the parking lot to the starting point for fifty miles of trails.  There’s 1,800 feet or so of elevation to the top and no slipping on icy aluminum.  The doomed but don’t tell me slog against the inevitability of age has transferred from trudging up and down stadium steps to … here.  Fair enough. 

The cot was folded up last night for a real bed.  A better nights sleep can mean but one thing; what is the fastest, steepest route to the top?  I see maps are available but that takes at least two-thirds of the fun out of it.  Just keep taking the steepest trail till you get there.    

The business cards arrived and the boxes are slowly receding.  There’s weekend time available for exploration, and the trail time will help me sort through the thicket of opportunity in Seaside.  Tuesday will soon arrive and I’m to deliver a presentation at a community meeting.  The essence of it, and the essence of what’s been keeping me awake on the cot (beside that poorly placed support bar) are thinking through the best series of steps to position the organization and community for the opportunity ahead on Seaside’s trail.  There’s no one perfectly correct path, including the fastest, steepest route.

No, it will be more circuitous than that.  Public policy, organizational development, community achievement; these are endeavors without well-marked trails and maps available at the Visitors Center.  While the graphics of Newton’s three laws of motion on the office walls amuse me (from Chicago graphic artist Justin Van Genderen, check out his work here), it’s not quite as simple as force equals mass times acceleration.  We’re sort of at the first law stage anyway; where every object in a state of uniform motion tends to remain in that state of motion unless an external force is applied to it.

The simplest way to view it is that force would be me.  That’s the shortest, steepest path.  But that’s the wrong path.  I am a force, not the force.  The force will be the team working together.  A team working together is far more powerful than any single team member. 

That’s the calculus of the steps ahead.  How best to arrange, augment and direct the team?  That is what I am taking the measure of in every interaction.  Is this person giving to the team or taking from the team?  Do they even have an orientation to teamwork?  If so, are they in the best position to contribute?  If not, how can we get them there? 

Many trails.  Some lead to the top and some don’t.  Many questions.  Some easily answered and some not. 

Just keep the puking off the playing field (really, you should have taken the first detour, here).  Worst case?  Step around it.