Wreck-It Steve

"Sometimes in order to create, you need to destroy."

Whether this aphorism holds any truth is difficult to say. There is no empirical evidence for causality in this order; wrecking before building. Change is an inevitable part of life, but can it involve taking steps back in order to find a different direction or does it always involve moving ahead from where you are?

While playing around with these thoughts, I came across several leadership posts favouring the act of destruction, some of which written by people I highly admire. In one of them, the author claims that too many leaders are concerned with fixing things, when what they should be doing is breaking things (see Leadership Is About Breaking Things by Mike Myatt, one of the top leadership bloggers in the U.S. and regular guest author for Forbes online magazine). Now just to be clear on this, I am in no position to question any of the authors’ insights as I cannot match their wisdom. As a matter of fact, Mike is one of few bloggers whose new posts he shares via Twitter I tend to retweet even before having read them (I eventually read them all!). But still, even if it is needed to break down a wall to build a better one, you would probably end up using the same bricks. Or will you smash them up to dust to produce new bricks as well?

Before I start breaking things around me, I need to make sure that I got it right. Or at least overcome my fear of not knowing whether what will be broken is eventually replaced by something better. And maybe that is what differentiates one who leads from one who leads well. A fearless leader has solid faith and does not worry about the trials of this present time, but looks beyond to the coming time.

I clearly have a lot to learn still before becoming Wreck-It Steve. How about you?