Detours Serve a Purpose

Detours cause most people some aggravation, irritation, exaggeration, and frustration. Why is this? Several reasons:

1. It is thought that we will lose time and fall behind our schedule (busy)

2. A detour will take longer to get to my destination (time lost)

3. Going an unfamiliar path provides a little anxiety because we aren't familiar with the roads on the detour route (we tend to revert back to our default setting)

After many years of raising children, starting and running my own business for nearly 25 years and not to mention marriage, community involvement, and serving in my church I now look back at the detours and see I didn't lose time as much as I gained a better and new way of doing things. It helped me find more success than failures. Detours have been more of a blessing and a correction in my direction and even helped me to fail forward rather than spin my wheels.

It is past time for you to break away from the routine route you have been on as it relates to your workforce development plan. It isn't working. Are you afraid to step on toes? Do you already have too much to do and you think the detour will hurt your current efforts?

Rarely does anyone imposition themselves. You need to be impositioned from time to time to have a correction in your current direction. Too often the correction comes because of our stubbornness, habits, faulty thought patterns, and we listen to our guts too much. Plain and simple it won't happen on your own because you think everything you currently do must be done. This is simply not true. I encourage you to make a list today on a sheet of paper. Yes, not on an electronic device and God forbid you start to rely and depend on Generative AI right now. Take out a piece of paper and a pen and write at the top of your paper, These are the things I:

A. Must Do

B. Should Do

C. Could Do

Under these three headings write down all the things you do that fit into these categories. After you do this share them with your supervisor/leader, other friends or people that do a similar job you do and ask the to critique your list. Get ready to take a detour from the current route you are traveling on because no two people will construct the same list. This alone should tell us to have others check our current direction from time to time. We need loving critics in our life rather than people who are critical.

People today are staying the course with maybe a few twists in turns in the road but they are avoiding mapping out a new route because it would change everything. Perhaps you don't need everything changed but turning around your workforce is going to require you chart out a new direction, a new route, and you are going to need a lot of help.

Now you feel safe because most people today don't believe they can make a major impact on their workforce. After all it isn't your fault and no one really expects you to make any significant progress no matter what you do. Whew...you are off the hook. No, not really because your workforce will do three things if you stay your current course:

1. Determine your culture for you instead of leadership developing a healthy culture.

2. Putting out fires will consume more of your time and give you a false sense of priority.

3. Status quo will never grow your business it will only allow for you to be mediocre at best

This is how most of us deal with change and the unknown. We prefer to stay on the path we know rather than get off the familiar and onto the unfamiliar. I founded the Transformation Network, a faith-based 501 (c) 3 in 1999. It grew in part because we had many detours and we didn't travel the familiar roads very often. Sometimes this got us into trouble but most of the time it positioned us to be something better and greater. I don't know much but I do know that God's ways are greater and higher than mine. I am glad He put me on many detours. Today, as you are going look for the DETOUR SIGNS and chart a new course.