When you don’t give a fish

For this simple exercise in strategic decision-making, you will need a teacher, a man, a fish, a rod, a stopwatch, and a river.

Strategy 1: See how long it takes you to give a man a fish.

Strategy 2: See how long it takes you to teach a man to fish.

Based on the results, choose strategy 1 or 2.

Strategy 2 takes longer, requires more effort (e.g. the teacher), and the man goes hungry until he is competent. Of most concern though is the risk that he may never make the grade as a fisherman. But you chose that strategy because it’s a sustainable change – one that transforms a charity case into a beacon of self-sufficiency. It’s a change worth the short-term increase in effort and discomfort.

But outside the Utopian world of proverbs, leaders who seek transformational change are all too often unwilling to endure the added cost and disruption of implementing change. For example, they short-change the resourcing of the initiative before it starts – presumably believing that it will somehow happen by magic, or osmosis. Or, it suffers the death of a thousand cuts along the way, as leaders lose either their focus, or their belief.

Making change happen is hard, which is why some people love it. But no-one loves going into battle without the full quota of extra resources they need to win their future.

The grass may be greener on the other side of the fence, but to get there you first need to climb over the fence, which slows you down when you’re trying to go faster; takes extra effort when you’re trying to work smarter not harder; and increases the risk of falling when you need more risk in your life like a hole in the head. But keep your eyes on the prize, because once that fence is behind you, that luxuriant field you’ve worked so hard to reach leads you down to a river – where you might just find a man reeling in a fish.