We were walking at the Helderberg Nature Preserve and came upon this sign that is both helpful and unhelpful at the same time (by the way, there are cobras and puff adders in this Preserve!). Whatever the choice, it’s correct — you get where you’re going. Wouldn’t it be great if life were this way? When faced with a big choice, you know that you’re going to make the right (or left) one.
The Cheshire Cat: That depends a good deal on where you want to get to.
Alice: I don’t much care where.
The Cheshire Cat: Then it doesn’t much matter which way you go.
Alice: …So long as I get somewhere.
The Cheshire Cat: Oh, you’re sure to do that, if only you walk long enough.”
Lewis Carrol. Alice in Wonderland
Alas, life is not like that. So, what do you do? You do the best you can.
When I’m considering a potential project, or listening to someone describe their goals, I think about three things:
- What’s the outcome you are looking for?
- How are you going to get it?
- What makes you think your approach will work?
Again, if only life were so simple that these answers were set before beginning. Often, we may know what we want, but are unsure how to go about accomplishing it. Or you have to try something that hasn’t been done before, so you don’t know whether this way will work at all.
Sometimes things change while in progress. A lot of life is iteration. You do so much, then take a look at it and make adjustments – like recipes that always add “season to taste” at the end as a kind of all-inclusive final step. The fancy business word is “agile.” From time to time, you have to stop the work in progress and evaluate whether the goal is still the same. If not, you make adjustments and then keep going until the next reevaluation point.
And a lot of the time, the decision you make is correct at the time you make it, but then “something happens,” and you don’t get the results you expected. Our first mortgage had an adjustable rate, and as our luck had it, rates only went down for the next 10 years (this was in 1984 – when interest rates were double-digit!). We looked like financial geniuses! But if rates had gone back up. . . . well, not so genius!
That was our experience this year with the Anglican Diocese of False Bay. We arrived unsure of what help we could provide. After some iteration, we have two projects; one is a computerized staff index, and the other is a Diocese property inventory – the South African Parliament is debating a Constitutional change that would allow expropriation without compensation for some specific types of land, and the Diocese needs to get a handle on what they have and how it’s titled.
In the end, it’s about making good decisions based on good data. Data can become information, information develops into knowledge, and knowledge turns into wisdom. And with wisdom, we can make the right (or left) choices. So if you knew there was a cobra on the right path, you’d take the left path, which would be the right decision!
Authors: Jeanne and Randy spend some of their time in South Africa helping the Anglican and Methodist churches with their work on ECD centers, youth programs, and other priority projects for church staff.
