WHAT ARE THE FACTORS THAT WILL HELP YOUR PEOPLE FLOURISH?
When I was a child, my father was in the army. So every few years we moved to a new location. We lived in an army house, which came with all kinds of conditions and responsibilities. For example, you were not allowed to make any significant changes to the house, and you must maintain the house and yard very well. (I recall the level of cleaning my mum and dad did before leaving each house included dusting the lightbulbs.)
I remember very clearly that my mum and dad were very focused on making each next house a home, wherever we were. And part of this was having a great yard and garden, no matter how small. Often this involved a vegetable garden or fruit trees, that with care and attention, flourished.
And so when I was thinking about the concept of flourish for my intention this year, I was remembering back to what it was they did that made our gardens flourish wherever we were. Sydney, Melbourne, Canberra.
They grew all kinds of things. We had corn and green beans and asparagus, carrots, lettuce, rhubarb, silverbeet, strawberries, and sometimes fruit trees. It was really quite remarkable what they managed to grow well, often in a very small patch of ground with less than ideal conditions.
But here’s what I remember.
They did everything that they could to create the right conditions for what they chose to grow. And they did choose things that were suitable for the environment we lived in. They would prepare the garden beds and soil and build the right kind of drainage and set up the watering, and they would add the fertiliser and regularly weed the garden beds.
And then they would leave those things to grow.
Mum and Dad couldn’t change the weather. They couldn’t make any large structural changes. They did the best they could inside the constraints they had. But they absolutely used everything that was within their realm of influence. And I remember particularly in Sydney, that summer meant home grown strawberries. We always had strawberries. Even though my brother and I played hockey in the backyard and the ball would end up in the strawberry patch, we always had strawberries.
Not far from our house in Sydney, there was a horse riding school. And so very occasionally there would be horses ridden gently down our street. So on one particular weekend afternoon my mum noticed that the horses had been by. She looked out the kitchen window and she could see horse droppings on the road.
Now most people would probably leave those horse droppings right where they were. But no, my mum saw an opportunity. So while my teenage brother and I hid on the kitchen floor laughing, she grabbed a shovel, and she went out to the road and she scooped up those horse droppings and she used them in the veggie garden. And we had the best rhubarb and the best silverbeet crop we had ever had.
My two takeaways:
- Have attention to what you can influence.
- Be prepared to do the things that you know some people just would not do.
And while we laugh about it, my goodness, the results and the outcome from that 10 minutes of scooping up the poop and redeploying it, were just the stuff that real memories are made of. And the garden flourished!
It’s the same with our people, ourselves and our organisations. Have you laid the foundations? Have you created the best set of conditions that you can, given the constraints you have? And once you’ve done all that, are you simply letting things grow, with a bit of gentle weeding?
Then pay attention. Because when there is an opportunity, you want to optimise it. When you have an opportunity to do something that other people wouldn’t do, or you can go the extra mile that will make the big difference, then grab that opportunity and do it.
Wishing you a flourishing 2025, full of vigorous growth, excellence and the opportunity to bloom.
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