“It’s not my problem.”
Not something you’ll ever catch a leader saying. “Your problem is my problem” is more like it.
This thinking does not come naturally to me. My tendency has long been to shrug and shuffle away from the center of things, even if that leaves a void, no one solving the problem at all.
From my journal, almost six years ago:
Had a midday adventure when Annie was inspired to get the dept. Whole Foods pizza for lunch on David’s dime. Needless to say—not a great idea. Still new, the pizza folks at WF had not been relayed our request when we showed up at noon, and asked for 1.5 hours to make 3 pizzas. Annie huffed and puffed, and then ordered out all their single slices, which they put into the oven to warm up.
I love that—the pivot to ordering single slices. What I don’t love is my own implicit bystander-hood. I recede into the background of the anecdote (and I remember it this way, too)—standing there like an idiot, thinking “I can always get lunch on my own at Pret.” Annie, meanwhile, seizes the problem and locates a simple solution.
If not for Annie, I would have returned to the office empty-handed, no pizza at all.
In other words: “It’s not my problem.”
Taylor Coe 