Weeds

I know that it’s Friday and we try to do something food-related today. Let’s see if you can follow my logic on this one.
I was out working in the garden. Part of why Summer is my favorite time of the year is that it brings a bounty of fresh fruits and veggies, some of which – tomatoes, eggplants, peppers, cukes – we grow most years here at Rancho Deluxe. There is nothing like a tomato fresh off the vine, still warm, with a little salt – fleur de sel if you have it.  Anyway, I was out doing one of those nasty garden tasks and of course I got a business thought.
No, I wasn’t spreading manure although the business symmetry there is pretty obvious.  I was weeding – pulling out all the nasty plants that grow along side the veggies.  The thing about weeds is really seeing them in context.  Many of the plants we consider weeds are really just plants that are growing in the wrong place or are growing too aggressively for their environment.  If you’ve ever planted mint and watched it take over everything else in the garden, you know what I mean.  In parts of Hawaii they consider some wild orchids weeds – don’t tell the florists!

As managers, we have to keep weeding all the time.  We need to make sure that the right people are in place, that the right tasks are their focus and that things that shouldn’t be there don’t choke our businesses to death.  Sometimes this means taking a person who is very productive but out of context and transplanting them.  Sometimes it means shelving a project that isn’t really a primary business focus but is draining resources required by the others.  Like going out in the garden, business weeding isn’t really a pleasant task but if you neglect it you can suffer the consequences just when all your other efforts are beginning to bear fruit.

How’s your garden growing?