To successfully lead is to create the environment for long-term success

A couple of my favorite books are Start With Why (2009) by Simon Sinek and Turn the Ship Around! (2012) by L. David Marquet, Captain, US Navy, retired.

Both books discuss leadership in a similar way: create the environment for success. I’m re-reading Turn the Ship Around! I find it useful in parenting as well.

My nephew aggravates me, and it’s not his fault. It’s mine. I have these rules in my head about how others should behave and he doesn’t fall in line with them.

It doesn’t bother me when he’s not staying over, but when he does, he’s more than a guest, he’s another household member.

Part of creating the environment means as the leader setting the attitude, the vision, the mission.

Another part means emplacing mechanisms that relieve the team of having to make the decision at all. Said another way, making it so that there’s really no other option.

I watched a YouTube video of him sharing a mechanism used in a hotel bathroom in Scotland to make it so that people just have to close the toilet lid – a bump on the wall to prevent the lid from staying open.

I woke up this morning to the lights in the house having been on all night, the toilet lid open (and therefore the probability of the cat snooping inside it or jumping in it thinking the lid is down), and toys on the floor. Immediately, I felt a sense of aggravation.

I can talk to him. Of course. But what about home mechanisms to relieve him of the decision in the first place? Making it so he can’t fail?