Remember that a mess, by its own nature, will never clean itself up. #QuoteADay #Day128 #edchat #edu #RollUpYourSleeves
Parenting and leadership have a lot in common. One consistency is the regular creation of messes. Regardless of where they came from and how they got there, one thing about messes is that they don't clean themselves up.
Leave a milk spill on the floor of your kitchen when you go to work? When you return it is either still there, or still there in spirit, with the stench and stickiness to remind you.
Leave a staffing issue on the table in your school or district? It's still going to be a mess the next time you visit it.
Messes are only cleaned up when people consciously work on them. This means the investment of time, effort, energy, and critical thinking. These all require capacity from the people involved and the organization(s) these people are from.
We can stick our heads in the sand if we like; "magical thinking" sometimes makes us feel better for a split second.
Yet, the next time we put our foot in that dried milk, or start talking about staffing for next year, the mess is still there.
Since time and energy will be expended to address the mess regardless, it is better to work through situations as they arise, if for no other reason than cleaning up one mess at a time is easier than attempting to clean up three.
We all make messes throughout life. Therefore, regardless of whether the current mess we encounter was left by someone (or something) we know of, or that we don't, all messes we encounter are inherently "ours."
It's always better to take responsibility than not.
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