“The quickest way to get something done is to stop waiting for someone else to do it.”
Over the years, I’ve watched countless projects and community initiatives come to life. I’ve also watched plenty of good ideas die. Surprisingly, most of them didn’t fail because they were bad ideas. They failed because they got stuck somewhere between the first conversation and the first action.
Everyone agreed something should happen. Everyone agreed it was a worthwhile goal. Everyone even agreed someone ought to do something. Then came the meetings, the discussions, the opinions, the “make me feel important” approvals, the revisions, and the unnecessary delays. Before long, more energy was being spent talking about the project than actually moving it forward.
Sometimes the greatest obstacle to progress isn’t opposition….It’s the endless pursuit of consensus and tug of war of who will get the credit instead who will do the actual work.
The truth is that getting something off the ground is rarely glamorous. It’s easy to show up once the crowds arrive. It’s easy to support an idea once it’s proven and it’s easy to take credit once momentum has already been created and the research is done. What people don’t always see is what happened before that momentum existed.
They don’t see the unanswered phone calls, the doors that closed, the hours spent digging in, questioning, troubleshooting, and trying again. They don’t see the moments when everyone else decided something couldn’t be done and moved on.
It starts with someone asking questions that nobody else is asking. Someone who refuses to accept answers that don’t make sense. Someone willing to keep digging when everyone else is satisfied with the explanation they were given. Someone who is so persistent that eventually people have no choice but to listen.
Most opportunities aren’t lost because they were impossible. They’re lost because people accepted the first obstacle as the final answer. They accepted “that’s just the way it is” when they should have asked one more question.
Sometimes it takes someone willing to look stubborn, persistent, annoying, and maybe even a little bitchy because they care more about finding a solution than being liked in the moment.
By the time it haslegs, the hardest part already happened. Someone pushed the flywheel when it wasn’t moving….and more often than not, that person simply refused to wait for somebody else to do it.
Deeper Than a Puddle 