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Potatoes and Potential

Each year in the early spring, I get out my rotary tiller and push it to the end of our yard where I have a small garden plot.  During the late fall and winter, the dead stalks and vines from the previous year's crops create a dense layer of vegetation that must be tilled under to make way for the new plants.  Unfortunately, my 2019 garden was not very successful.  I was busy at work and failed to keep the weeds out of my plants and eventually gave up on harvesting any crops.  My potatoes had done well up until July,  at which point the weeds between the rows finally choked the thick green vines and turned them into a dull brownish-yellow.  

Potatoes take a long time to grow.  As the vines grow taller, you must heap dirt around the base of the plants to prolong the growth of the tubers underneath the surface.  Eventually, flowers appear and the vine begins to die, indicating that the potatoes have finished growing.  Since my plants had been choked out by mid-summer, I figured the potatoes had died prematurely and I never checked them after that.  However, when I began tilling my garden for 2020, I started uncovering huge potatoes!  Some were eight inches long and thicker than my fist.  I immediately began kicking myself for giving up so early on the potatoes.

So, what happened?  How did I misjudge my potato crop so badly?  First, the plants didn't look healthy.  The vine above the ground did not give an accurate representation of what was below the ground.  Had I dug below the surface, I would have found healthy tubers.  Second, the plants never died like I had assumed.  They were suffering, but weren't dead.  Many plants are incredibly resilient and can be brought back to a healthy state with a little bit of care.  I assumed they weren't worth saving, but I was wrong.  Somehow, the plants sustained just enough life to keep the potatoes alive and well under the ground.  

 There are several key leadership lessons that I learned from this experience:
  1. Don't give up on people or projects too soon.  A little bit of attention can quickly turn things around.  
  2. Dig a little deeper to uncover the whole story.  Had I looked under the surface, I would have found out my potatoes were just fine. 
  3. Your people may be doing great work, but if you aren't paying attention as the leader, all that work will be in vain.  I thought my plants had given up, but had I paid more attention, I would have realized they were still producing quality potatoes. 
  4. Sometimes you need to abandon projects, but make sure the project is no longer viable before you plow everything under and start over.  Otherwise, you will lose out on hard work that still may produce good things. 
Leadership is a process.  It takes time to develop people and projects, and things don't always go smoothly.  It's a mistake to give up as soon as things get rough.  No project worth pursuing is without challenges, and that's why we need good leaders who can navigate difficult situations. 

-Dr. Travis Kahle

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