The Building Of A Railway Bridge Of Life

Have you ever compared being the best we can be in life to the building of a bridge? A railway bridge?
If you leave out a centre section, and that section is over a river, the train is going to go right smack into the river no matter how well all the rest of the span is built. This can be compared to all the tools and systems that, in business, we need to build a solid, permanent, cohesive, and long-term, results-achieving sales organization.
If you don't get from one side of the river to the other, whatever the reason, it doesn't make any difference how good some parts of the bridge are.
The tools can be world class and still be useless. In other words, the best tools in the world, if they are not fit into a system and if people are not taught how to use those tools, are essentially useless.
What does being the best we can be have to do with bridges and trains? As a leader, you are the train. The locomotive. You are responsible for pulling the rest of the train. Furthermore, you are pulling, much of the time, not just leading by brute force. Leaders have the ability to move (or motivate) the rest of train and in the process gain great momentum.
It is imperative that as leaders, we teach people how to build their own bridges so that the train can continue on its course.
The reason leaders seem to work so little, or work so easily, is that they do not use brute force unless they must take a stand for a value or principle. They may have, early in their careers, attempted to lead by brute force, but they quickly learned that they burned themselves out if they continued on that path.
Some people, run around trying to figure out what to do first, totally unaware that his/her fundamental need, in the beginning, should have been to sit down and draw up a plan. Instead, they have gone running off and think that taking "action" is something that will get them recognition.
Just because something is easy to do does not make it the smart thing to do. It just makes it easy. And possibly even fun, at least for a while.
Taking action and getting no results is silly and counter- productive. If what you are doing is not working, take a moment to stop and look at what you are doing and, if necessary, find another path. Surely there is a roadmap to follow. Just keep building relationships, like building bridges. You have to build the whole bridge to make it work. Stick around to complete the task. Build relationships, help people get what they want and you will get everything you ever dreamed of!
by Jan Ruhe