Gridlock is unacceptable

It’s time to get things moving again

Gridlock is unacceptable
By Douglas E. Welch

[audio:http://welchwrite.com/career/audio/2009/career-op-20090109.mp3]

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The world is in gridlock. Everything from government, to business, to our own personal relationships are suffering from an almost universal inability to get anything done. It seems we have collectively forgotten why we are involved in our various shared endeavors. We partner together to do good, not only for ourselves, but for everyone involved. When progress becomes a slave to ideology, pettiness and fear, gridlock is the result.

I have said, and others have as well, that if you are not moving forward you are falling behind. Gridlock doesn’t maintain the status quo, it feeds a downward spiral where everything begins to fall apart. Gridlock serves no one and those who promote gridlock are failing themselves and everyone around them.

We only need to look around us to see the effects of gridlock. Here in California our state government has decided that it is more important to do nothing, rather than address the state’s, and the people’s, business. We are operating (if you can call it that) without a budget and everyone is suffering, Infrastructure is failing, employees are lost and projects are canceled. In just a few more weeks the state will be forced to pay its bills with IOUs instead of cash. This simply spreads the pain even further. In our case, gridlock is bringing the state to the verge of collapse. Yet, it still continues.

As I wrote last week, this is a Year of Leadership — a time to rededicate ourselves to leadership in all forms, at all levels. One way to exercise our own personal leadership is to reject gridlock as a strategy. When we are confronted with gridlock we must make it very clear that we expect progress, action and achievement from our leaders as well as ourselves. The alternatives are too dangerous to allow.

Of course, some might say, “It is better to do nothing than to do the wrong thing.” I don’t agree. We discover the correct path by trying things, failing and then trying something else. “Fail often and fail quickly” should be our watch words. It is rare that anyone hits upon the perfect solution the first time. Life is a series of actions, corrections and further actions refined by what we have learned. Gridlock is caused by waiting for perfection even though we know that perfection does not exist. We allow perfectionism and analysis paralysis to prevent us from doing the good because we seek only the perfect. We sit and do nothing.

Gridlock is often blamed on someone else. “They” won’t compromise. “They” won’t concede. “They” won’t move. The truth is, though, personal leadership demands we find a solution regardless of the obstacles placed in our path. We must use all the tools at our disposal — compromise, control, bullying, enlightened self-interest — to achieve a breakthrough. Simply giving up and blaming the other side is not an option. If you do that, everyone loses. Again, gridlock doesn’t just stop us in place. We fall behind as the rest of the world continues to move around and beyond us. In a world where so much needs to be done, so little happens.

The trouble isn’t just “out there”, though. Are you guilty of gridlock? Are you stalling projects or activities simply because you can? Are you refusing to cooperate and compromise with others? Do you think you are gaining in your goals by preventing others from achieving theirs? If so, I believe you are wrong in many ways. You may not think so, but you are harming yourself as much, if not more, than those around you. You do not become successful by constantly being negative, angry or and obstructionist. You may reap some short term rewards but you put both your job and your career at risk. There is no way to disguise these traits for long and once you are labeled as such, others will marginalize you and remove you at their earliest convenience.

One way to practice your leadership in the coming days is to thwart gridlock yourself and find it deeply unacceptable in others. The government, the economy and out lives will only improve if we stand up to gridlock and find some way, any way, to move things forward instead of contributing to a long, slow and depressing decline.

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