![]() ![]() Dependent on their boss for every small decision, and every small action stagnates their growth: slows them down, prevents them from developing critical thinking skills, and leaves them feeling uninspired and unmotivated.ĭaniel Pink writes in Drive “Control leads to compliance autonomy leads to engagement.” With autonomy out of the equation, there’s no engagement, and less engagement leaves less room for growth which causes more attrition. Reliant on their boss to do all the thinking for them, employees fail to think for themselves. If your employees believe their job is to do what you tell them, you’re sunk.” You will not have allowed anyone around you to show up with solutions outside the reach of your own personal headlights. Trying to build leaders by regularly exposing them to your brilliance guarantees a lack of development. Susan Scott writes “This conscious or unconscious internal response is incredibly expensive both for the organization and for the individual. In their case, time spent solving problems is inversely proportional to value creation. They either act too late or avoid it all together. More time spent on small decisions leaves less time for key decisions – decisions that are critical for business and organization growth. Exhaustion from attending to surface-level problems leaves less mental space to think about hard problems. It takes a lot of energy and often leads to decision fatigue, exhaustion, and burnout. Getting involved in every small detail, in every small problem is no joke. Once mole whacking becomes a habit, leaders are involved in every decision, in every problem. Makes you feel important and gives an illusion of productivity.īut its effects are quite damaging. ![]() You finish whacking a mole and there’s another one waiting for you. When leaders in an organization make mole whacking their job: they have a long list of important things to do, but instead of making progress on the difficult parts of their job that will move their teams and their organization forward, they are weighed down by trivial decisions. “If I had gone after the grubs, I could have spent Saturdays riding my bicycle.” Leaders dedicated to mole whacking makes their people and their organization stuck There was a moment of silence on the line, and then I overheard a faint: “Damn!” As I chuckled, Sam continued. You sprinkle it on the grass and it kills the grubs that the moles eat.’” I asked him what it was for and he said, ‘The mole problem.’ So I asked him, ‘How do you get that stuff down into the burrows?’ And he said, ‘Oh, it’s not for the moles. I was at the hardware store standing in line behind a guy with a big bag of something that had a skull and crossbones on it. ![]() Many years later, Sam called me and said, “Suze, you won’t believe it. Sam devoted many Saturday mornings to mole whacking. In one battle plan, a mole would trigger the trap, whereupon it would be skewered. Another approach was to stuff foul-smelling smoke bombs into the burrows, after which our yard resembled a fantastic galactic landscape riddled with active volcanoes spewing toxic fumes. There would soon be rivulets of water running throughout the yard. Sometimes he would use the hose, shoving it as far down into the burrows as possible. Resolute, Sam would head out the door to do battle. Dozens of trails ended in large mounds of freshly turned dirt. Each Saturday morning Sam would look out the window and heave a sigh. Sam’s responsibility was to tackle the mole problem in our yard. In our teens, Sam and I had Saturday chores to attend to before we could do as we pleased. Susan Scott, author of Fierce Conversations explains the idea through her own story with her brother Sam which goes like this: What happens when leaders in an organization are dedicated to mole whacking when instead what they should be doing is grub hunting?
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