The orchard knows what season it’s in. Does your leadership?

I live in the middle of a working apple orchard, and right now the place is shifting gears.

Harvest finished last week. 6,200 bins of apples are in cool storage, the picking bags are hanging up until February, and the machinery has been brought in for service. The trees are quietly losing their leaves.

Everything on the orchard has a season. A clear beginning, a purposeful middle, and a definite end. When harvest is over, it’s over. The pace changes, the task list changes, and everyone knows why.

Most of our work has seasons too. But many leaders I work with resist creating that same clarity, because naming your top priorities means accepting that other things won’t get the same attention. And that’s uncomfortable.

I once worked with a senior leadership team wrestling through the tough decisions to land their top priority initiatives for the next 12 months. It was worth the argy-bargy and the compromise to reach clarity at the end.

And then the CEO undermined it in one sentence: ‘Yes these are the priorities, but everything that didn’t make the list also needs to get done.’

The air was sucked from the room. The priority list was rendered meaningless the moment she said it.

A priority only means something if something else is NOT a priority. The orchard doesn’t try to harvest and blossom at the same time. Each season has its focus — and its discipline.

As a leader, it’s your job to decide what matters most. If you won’t do that, who will?

If everything is a priority, you’re not leading — you’re just managing a list.

Go Fearlessly – Corrinne