Now I have all that deep soul searching off my chest (about why I am bothering to write this) I can get on with writing about what I have been doing.
It is funny the way things happen. Whilst my soul was slowly being destroyed because I had let myself languish far too long in one place, I found the joy being sucked out of what had always been my solace, that is spending time with my horses. Yes I was spending a lot of time with them, but in a very business like manner. I was developing my stud and doing all the right things about research on bloodlines and marketing etc but a lot of the day to day just being with them was lost. I even had someone employed to do what I had always loved doing. Kaching! Doesn’t that happen so often to us in business. We start a business because we have a passion about something or because we are technically good at something but as time goes on and the business grows we spend less and less time doing what we love and more and more time administering others doing what we used to love doing. I wasn’t doing something I hated, in fact I love working out bloodlines and talking to other people about my horses, but I don’t like doing all the paperwork and the organising schedules and would rather muck out a stable than do the filing anytime. How many times though do we see managers of businesses clinging to administrative tasks when their time could be better spent elsewhere? They may have different reasons to do so, it could be a need to micro manage, or a fear of not being good enough at all that “strategic” stuff or perhaps a fear of others perceptions if they are not seen to be “working hard” but the result is the same – time lost that could have driven the business forward that can never be regained (You see this is where meandering gets you, I had no idea that was what I was going to write about when I started). Answer? Let it go people. Hire someone else who can do it better and more efficiently and put your energies to where they are best suited. That might be working in the strategic space or it might be using your technical talents, but running a business should be about have the right person doing the job, not one person doing all the jobs.
Back to my original track. I quit my business, something I found hard because as well as the uncertainty of branching out in a new endeavor, I was also leaving behind some very good friends and colleagues I had been working with for 20 years (and I’m only 26 fancy that!). I was excited about what I was moving towards but still hampered by what I was moving away from. I enlisted the help of my wonderful colleague Ros Tasker and one suggestion she had was to look at the field (I have come to the conclusion pun-less writing is impossible) of horse assisted leadership training, thereby combining two passions and perhaps assuaging the guilt felt about “playing ponies” instead of doing real work. I couldn’t however face it. Work is work and play is play and much as I enjoy coaching and developing people and businesses it still comes into the work category where my horses are my relaxation. It would seem like trying to convince people I was eating diet food when I was eating chocolate.
Thanks to meeting someone new however my interest in horses assisted leadership development has been rekindled and I am happily researching away. In a webinar for The Leasdership Circle (Asia pacific) last night we were talking about the futility of loading new software onto people whose operating system was not yet able to run it. Maybe my operating system is ready to run something new.
