Mar

30

Working With What You Have, Not What You Don’t

Filed Under Leadership 

Stories abound these days of leaders attempting to do more with less. From shrinking teams to dwindling budgets, we can either run from the challenge or to the challenge. Ernie Schenck is no stranger to adversity. He wrote The Houdini Solution and challenges us to think inside the box, not outside the box, when it comes to doing more with less. “The legendary magician did his best work shackled, handcuffed, and chained inside the smallest of boxes—and yet he managed to find his way out every time.”

For the past couple weeks, I’ve been retelling a story from Apollo 13 about doing more with less. There’s a scene in the movie when the crew on the ground in Houston has to build an air filter that will allow the crew stuck in space to increase their oxygen supply. With limited resources (only what was onboard the spaceship), the crew on the ground had to figure out how to fit a square peg in a round hole.

I’m inspired by moments like these because I feel like many leaders are in a similar spot these days. We’ve got to lead our teams from here to there with only what we have in front of us. It’s not time to complain about what we don’t have or dream about better scenarios. It’s time to get the team on the same page with the same urgency for the same mission. Anything less could be catastrophic.

Comments

3 Responses to “Working With What You Have, Not What You Don’t”

  1. Tammy Dunahoo on March 30th, 2009 7:12 am

    Brad,

    When I read your post and watched the clip I thought of an poem I read once, “Faith is Above Reason.” The messsage is this…God stepped out onto nothing because there was nothing to step onto, with nothing in His hand because there was nothing to hold in His hand, and created the universe. May your team and all of us experience the creative direction of the Master Creator who needs NOTHING to create something incredible!

    Tammy

  2. Phil Long on March 30th, 2009 4:36 pm

    “First there is hard rock planet; then there is life, lots of it. First barren hills; then brooks with fish and cattails and red-winged blackbirds. First an acorn; then an oak tree forest.

    I’d like to be able to do that. First a hunk of metal; then a robot. First some wires; then a mind. First some old genes; then a dinosaur.

    How do you make something from nothing? Although nature knows this trick, we haven’t learned much just by watching her. We have learned more by our failures in creating complexity and by combining these lessons with small successes in imitating and understanding natural systems.”

    - Kevin Kelly
    http://www.kk.org/outofcontrol/ch24-a.html

  3. neil greathouse on March 30th, 2009 7:34 pm

    Well, Brad…you’re talking my language here with this post.

    We’ve even started a conference for creative people inside the church with the same tag line “something from nothing”.

    It’s called dirt.

    We don’t have a lot to work with sometimes…and it forces us to be creative.
    God made us from dust…practically nothing.

    Love your thoughts on this post and I just went to Amazon & bought the book. Looking forward to it!

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