One Boy, Two Boy…

“One boy is a boy.  Two boys is half a boy.  Three boys is no boy at all.”

–       Loren F. Stark, my late grandfather, often repeated by Dick Heston, my late father

“Reply all” is not our friend.  “Unloading the bus” isn’t either.  Nor is a “meeting” when a conversation will suffice.

On the farm, I would often ask if I could have a buddy come help with a job.  If it wasn’t a really important job, Dad would let me.  But if it was important and time sensitive, this quote above would always, and I do mean always be the answer.

Their point, as you likely already see, was that if all I had to do was focus on the hay that needed baled, that’s all I would focus on.  But a temptation to see who could knock whom off the wagon, or who could nail someone else’s shirt to the fence (yes, we did that, too) tended to take away from the work at hand. (And don’t even tempt me to talk about biological needs and electric fences…)

In short, focus matters, in terms of effectiveness and efficiency.  And, it’s true and applies to the what we do today, too.

We can’t afford to be inefficient, and that leads to ineffectiveness, which we can’t afford, either!

If two or more are gathered in God’s name, the hymnal tells us, “there is love.”  But, if two or more of us are gathered when only one of us is needed, no matter how much love there is, there’s also inefficiency and duplication and confusion and lack of focus.

This isn’t a call to reduce the love.  It’s a call to reduce the overlap.

Divide and conquer.  Make decisions.  Communicate one-on-one and don’t expect yourself (or anyone else) to be able to sort through 75 “reply all” e-mails.  Check the “To” line before you click “Send,” to make sure that it includes only the people who need the message and who will be accretive to the result.  Downsize the volume of communication and upgrade the quality.

In short, where one “boy” can do the job, let’s rely on them to do it, and make sure that we’re somewhere else, doing another job, wherever and whenever possible.