Built to Spec

The office staff recently took a team field trip to our new office, come 2020. After weeks of pouring over blueprints and envisioning what the new space would look like, we thought it would be good to show the rest of the gang the space in progress. While we still have a month or so to go until the move, we had heard they were beginning to frame and we wanted to see our dreams coming alive. For my CFO and me, it was a little more like a nightmare. Walls were in places they shouldn’t be, doors not where we expected. At first we thought we might be crazy but then we saw a copy of the plans that we approved on a cart that didn’t look like what was being built. When we called, the contractor said, "Oh yeah we had to make some changes based on X, Y, Z." After walking through the garden of understanding with the project manager, they found a way to accommodate our original plans but it left me irate and thinking, "why wouldn’t they call? Why wouldn’t they ask us? Don’t they know how much time we put into those plans?"

How often am I guilty of the same? How often in my leadership do I ask someone to keep the end in mind and draw a roadmap to the promised land only to change the final destination without so much as a conversation? In my righteous frustration, I’d like to say I’m better than my contractor friend. I’d like to say that, but I can’t. Do I recognize that leadership is not only about the product but about the build as well? How do I model the Lord’s accompaniment with us as I accompany others? Blessings as you build!