Leadership and line-drawing

They usually sit in little groups — little clumps of humans playing in the sand at the beach. They squat together, armed with mossy, soggy sticks that are doubling as instruments of art. What looks to you like a mangled mess of lines carved into the sand is undoubtedly a masterpiece in their minds, it being the result of at least 37 seconds of effort with the aforementioned sticks. Sometimes, if you look at it from the right angle, you can make out something. Maybe it’s a heart. Or their name. Or what appears to be random scribbles inscribed in the sand. Whatever it is, they’re proud of it. And so they should be.

Drawing a line in the sand may seem like a simplistic art form used mostly by young children at the beach, but in an organizational setting, it’s a fine art.

Drawing that line in the sand happens in different ways, at different times, and definitely with different results every time. Sometimes we draw the line on a small scale, right? We approach a teammate about their negative attitude. Or maybe we decide that what used to be good enough in a report we’re compiling isn’t good enough anymore, so we make it better.