“I’m Lost”

Allegedly you will never hear these words come out of the mouth of the average male driver.  Apparently, we of the male gender would rather get lost in the middle of nowhere and die of hunger or thirst rather than admit that we don’t know where we are.

I wonder sometimes if this is true of many government or business leaders as well.

Perhaps it is true of many of us in general.

As a strategy guy, measurable outcomes are everything for me.  My thought is that if you don’t know where you are going, you will never set out in the right direction, you will never know how close you are to your destination and you will never actually know when you arrive (if you do at all).

I often hear people say “we are tracking towards our objective”, “we are halfway there”, “we are almost there”, etc. and when I ask if they can actually define what the destination looks like, they haven’t the foggiest idea.

So my question then becomes …..

How do you know?

This question makes many people uncomfortable.  They would rather live in a fantasy world where knowing is less important than just having a gut instinct that they will know what it looks like when they get there or where excessive ego assures them that they have it all under control and don’t need anyone else’s help to get there.

If they get there.

Lewis Carroll, with his brilliance in many areas, captured this conundrum perfectly with this insightful quote from “Alice in Wonderland”:

“ One day Alice came to a fork in the road and saw a Cheshire cat in a tree. “Which road do I take?” she asked. “Where do you want to go?” was his response. “I don’t know,” Alice answered. “Then,” said the cat, “it doesn’t matter. ”

So whether you have a personal or professional destination in mind, make it a point to know where you are going and having determined this, know the path you intend to take.  You may not know what every inch of the path looks like in advance but choosing a path is still critical.

Because if you don’t know where you are going, any path will do.

The only problem with this is that the likelihood of you reaching your intended destination, having selected a path at random or allowing a path to be selected on your behalf, is relatively slim and for many people, almost non-existent.

Some people enjoy the journey, ignoring the destination.  For those people, the path is probably irrelevant.

However, if the destination is important for you or for others who are depending on you, know what the destination looks like and have some idea how you are getting there.

Otherwise, at some point, there is a good chance that you may find yourself uttering the dreaded words:

“I’m lost”

Or even worse ….

… someone else, through their words or actions, may be telling you:

“You’re lost”

or

“We are all lost, thanks to you”.

Each of us is far too amazing a miracle to allow our gifts and talents to be hidden, misdirected or untapped because we didn’t know where we were going ….

…. or where we were being called to be, in fulfillment of our purpose and unlimited potential.

In service and servanthood,

Harry

This entry is the same as my detailed blog entry for “I’m Lost”, which can be found here.