Measure Twice, Cut Once

My list of “Do it yourself” projects at our home is quite long. Recent projects have included the restoration of the fireplace in our living room, an updating of our master bathroom and the removal of a large tree in our side yard.  When I first started working on projects like these I remember reading that you should always measure two times before you cut something because once the cut is made, there is no going back. This extra time and effort in the planning process has served me well over the years and has saved me from making some expensive mistakes. Unfortunately during that tree removal I did not practice this kind of discipline.  After spending a good portion of a day cutting this large tree into manageable pieces, I was down to the final ten feet.  Since trees are widest at the base, this final cut was going to be a problem for my small chain saw. Although Stephanie had encouraged me to buy a new one for this project, I did not want to spend the money for the larger saw.  With the sun getting lower in the sky and my desire to finish before dark increasing, I decided that what this job needed was a little brute force applied in the right place. This was the first in a series of bad decisions.  Since Stephanie’s jeep has 4-wheel drive, I decided that would be just the kind of power I needed.  With the tree trunk cut as much as my small saw would allow, I wrapped a chain around the tree, attached it to the jeep and applied the force.  When the tree did not budge I cut some more and tried again. On the third attempt I heard the tree begin to crack and was able to move the jeep out of the way before it came down.  (This is where the measuring part comes in.)  When the tree finally did come down, the Jeep was nine feet from the tree and the tree trunk was ten feet long.  The sound of the tree hitting the car and smashing the rear window is not something I will soon forget, but the most painful part of this mistake was explaining to Stephanie that by not buying the chain saw, I was now on the hook for an expensive repair to her car.  So what are the leadership lessons to be learned from this miscalculation?

I shared this story with you because as leaders there is often more to learn from our failures than successes. You may see other leadership lessons from this story.  If you do, respond and offer your insight.