There's an old line out here: in Colorado, whiskey's for drinking and water's for fighting over.
This past weekend we walked out and found water in the ditch. In the middle of October. I'd stopped expecting any until spring, and I stood there a minute before I believed it.
It came because the week before, the sky gave us eight-tenths of an inch of rain. That may not sound like much if you live somewhere green. Here it's a gift, and it had been a long time coming. The river came up enough to feed the ditches, the ditch came down to us, and we got a pond fill. A pond fill in October is unheard of.
What that water buys is two weeks. Two weeks for the trees to have a proper drink and store some of it down in the roots as the late Indian summer carries on, and to hold them until the first snows come. Back in the spring I wrote about dropping everything when the ditch ran and walking twenty thousand steps to get the irrigation moving. This time felt quieter. Less like a scramble, more like being handed something precious and being careful not to spill it. (Although I still got 17,000+ steps each day this weekend getting the irrigation infrastructure set back up again!)
The fifth permaculture principle is Use and Value Renewable Resources and Services. Lean on what renews itself instead of what you have to keep buying, burning, or forcing.
Rain is about as renewable as it gets. But living here has taught me that renewable doesn't mean unlimited. It comes when it comes, in the amount it comes. Valuing it means being ready to catch it, storing what you can, and not wasting a drop. We shepherd it.
I've been thinking about what the other precious resources are, the ones that also renew, but only at their own pace.
What I've seen in my work are the teams that can get their goals and rocks done, yet something is fraying at the edges.
Where do their great quarters come from? I think sometimes it comes out of the sheer effort and grind of the team. Out of the leaders who take ownership. Out of nights and weekends and work on top of work on top of work they already have. The results are real. So is the bill, and it's one that doesn't show up on the scorecard.
A team can hit its numbers while its health fails. Rocks and revenue measure what you did. Health measures what it cost you to do it. And a strong quarter is the best excuse there is for not looking at the hidden costs.
A team's energy, its goodwill, the trust between people who have to make hard calls together: those renew. Like the rain, they come back. But they come back at their own pace, and sometimes a quarter can spend resources faster than they renew.
Many of the founders I work with have run that way their whole careers. Under all of it sits one belief: if I work harder, it will work. For a long time it does. Effort built the company, and some version of "I'll prove it" was usually doing the pushing.
EOS is very good at rebuilding the machine around that engine. Clear seats, clean meetings, a scorecard everyone can read. What it doesn't do is change the fuel. When the business finally stops needing you to carry it, the engine is still running, with nothing to push against.
I wish I could say I'm writing this from the far side.
A few weeks ago I was coaching a man who has done very well, by every measure the world uses. Partway through, he said something I keep hearing: "I'm tired of working on these things." He'd gone after his inner life the same way he went after his career. Hard. On a schedule. With results expected.
We looked at what was costing him and what was replenishing him. In an earlier session he'd described the place he felt most alive: in front of a room, every eye on him. Then, almost in the same breath, he described the one place he'd ever felt real peace. Alone. Quiet. Nobody watching.
Two sources. One runs on other people's attention and has to be refilled every time. The other is free and renews itself, and he barely trusts it.
There's a line I've been saying to myself before I walk into a coaching session: I don't have to work as hard as I think. It's simple. It is not easy. My old reflex in a quiet moment can be to fill it, to offer something, to prove I'm useful. And the irony isn't lost on me. I'm the man who will turn even "work less hard" into a project if I'm not paying attention.
So back to leadership teams. The fix for a good quarter with an empty tank is not a more heroic next quarter. It's the slow work. Building trust between people, enough that they can say the hard thing in week three instead of month three. A team that refills while it runs. That work doesn't produce a neatly completed on-track scorecard each week. It produces a team that can win the year and still like each other afterward.
It's like our pond fill. Nobody sees it. The trees will be drinking from it for weeks.
Three questions for your October:
What precious resource are you spending as if it were unlimited? Your sleep, your team's goodwill, the patience of the people at home.
When the rain does come, are you ready to catch it, or does it run straight past you into the next thing?
What actually renews you, and how often do you let yourself have it?
With warmth from the orchard,
Steve
Sweet Earth Orchard — Hygiene, Colorado