I have a generally pessimistic attitude about rain. Please do not misunderstand me: I love rain, but I distrust forecasts. I have a nagging suspicion that if you ever look at a weather app, there is a perpetual chance of rain next week. Always next week. It rarely moves to the next day. Until this week.
Occasionally, my paranoia is wrong. (Feel free to tweet that.)
This week our kids ministry was planning to kickoff the semester with a night at the park. I invited myself (and the youth) to join them and to help with time together. Last week our children’s minister told me there were chances of rain all week, but I wrote it off as the perpetual rain chance. Then, I awoke yesterday to a steady rain.
The adjustment was pretty simple. Instead of meeting at the park, we were going to meet at the church and roll with it there, but there was still some work to make up.
In leadership, there is always a chance of rain. Something will usually go wrong, and the question is how will you respond?
Are you so tied to your schedule and plans that any alteration upsets the very core of your being?
Or maybe you’re so relaxed about plans that changing at the last minute does not worry you because you would not have done any planning before then anyway.
I would urge you to find the middle ground. Find the value in proper planning with a loose grip. Put forth the effort you need, but be willing to make adjustments at the last moment.
A similar situation happened at camp this summer. We were seeing remarkably hot temperatures, so we had a discussion before the final rec time. We had done the planning ahead of time, but felt it was time to call an audible, so we moved our rec time inside. All of the dominoes lined up, and our audible was a win all around.
Sometimes leadership requires flexibility. Scratch that. Leadership always requires flexibility. Learn to call an audible when the time comes. You’ll lead better because of it.