Hiding Behind Action. Are You Doing To Avoid Deciding?

When you start, following the culture around you is the smart thing to do. You don't know what’s gone into making good yet, so you watch, absorb, and do things the way they've been done before. It's how to learn the job.

But there's a point when that stops being learning and starts being hiding. When you could set the direction yourself, and instead you're waiting for a cue that had been coming from someone else.

And it’s up to you to notice when that moment has come. There's no ceremony where you're handed authority. You just reach a point where you could be the thinker instead of the doer, where you could set the culture instead of reading it, and that can be scary.

Being the doer has cover. You're doing what's been decided. Being the one who decides doesn’t. If it's wrong, it's yours.

That risk is real, and it may never go away. But I think the fulfilment that people are looking for, the sense that the work means something, comes when you take the call yourself.

I spent longer than I needed to waiting for someone to hand me that. And I now know nobody was going to. It wasn’t theirs to give.

Hiding Behind Action, Are You Doing To Avoid Deciding?