Today an example of a leaf:
I have decided I want to host a brown-bag lunch for our engineering team, providing an overview of a new language I've been playing with.
This is a small thing. It's one lunch, probably an hour of everyone's time.
It's tempting to jump to the forest. How will one brown-bag lunch help the company's bottom line?
The short answer is: it doesn't.
One brown-bag lunch will do nothing at all for the company's earnings this quarter. Or next quarter. Or even next year.
However, one brown-bag lunch just might...
... inspire an attendee to write a little reporting prototype, just to play with the new app
which just might ...
... inspire a passing product manager to make that a new feature
which just might ...
... get the product a "most improved 2012!" writeup in a major industry magazine
which just might ...
... increase sales by 75% that quarter.
Now there's a lot of mights in there. It might not happen. But it might. And if we don't hold that brown bag lunch, then it definitely won't happen.
So our leaf - a brown bag lunch - has helped our tree - employee training. And because we helped our tree, we gave our forest a better chance.
Handle the leaf, and think about the tree. The forest will follow naturally from there.
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