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Tip 17 - An easy way to develop a ‘Better Path’ to success
Do you eagerly and frantically check items off of your ‘to do’ list? Are there things you are forcing? Are there places where you could ease up? We often don't slow down enough to pay attention to an easy and appropriate alternative.
Here’s a different approach that is used in landscape gardening and architecture.
First a story: An architect built a cluster of office buildings around a central green. When construction was completed, the landscape crew asked him where he wanted the pathways.
"Just plant the grass solidly between the buildings" was the architect’s reply.
By late summer, the new lawn was laced with paths of trodden grass between the buildings. These paths turned in easy curves and were sized according to traffic flow.
In the autumn, the architect simply paved the paths. Not only were the paths beautifully shaped, they responded directly to user needs. These pathways are called ‘Lines of Desire’.
The lesson is: test before you set things in stone. If the pathways were immediately installed, they would not necessarily have been in the right places, they may have had sharp, rigid angles and a uniform width similar to every other pathway. However, by allowing them to form organically, it put the right-sized path, going in the right direction in just the right place.
Applying this principle to other areas:
As a parent, instead of pushing your kids into a certain career, why not let them first find their own interests? Once they've made their ‘tracks in the grass’, then pave with support where it is most needed.
Using this lessons in business, get customers to test your prototype service, product, or program during development. See how they use it, then modify to best meet their needs.
How about allowing employees to: pick the shifts they want to work; define their job responsibilities; or create the scope of their benefits package? Instead of forcing, ask where they would lay a track, then set it in stone when it is known what’s best and what’s wanted.
In situations where there are many unknowns, rather than go in with any preconceptions, try waiting and observing and see what comes naturally. The ‘lines of desire’ may take a little while to be laid down, but it will be worth the wait to get an easy and elegant solution.
It’s much easier to have another pair of eyes when dealing with problems or developments. A coach can aid your goal of becoming more successful in many ways.
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