#819 the wall

When I was in Washington, DC I was taken aback when I walked by a construction site.  It was a fenced off area that contained all of the usual heavy equipment, scaffolding, large hole with workers scurrying around, etc.  Only instead of a site that was designed to build a new building or even renovate an old one, all this work occurred around a pre-existing wall.

One wall.  The front of the building was preserved and everything else was totally torn down.  It was cause for a double-take -- here was a complete wall standing in the middle of an empty lot.

I was intrigued as to how they were able to save just the front and tear down everything around it.  I wondered what would warrant the obvious effort and expense to preserve just that one part of the building.  Obviously it was important for political, economic or historical reasons that I couldn't understand.

Your organization's mission is like that wall.  It needs to remain, despite the odds, obstacles or expense to preserve it.  You can alter what surrounds it, but the mission remains as the center for everything else.  Give yourself a mental image of what your "wall" would look like, even if nothing else were there, and take care that it remains standing through time.

-- beth triplett
leadershipdots.blogspot.com

@leadershipdots
leadershipdots@gmail.com