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“Trust the process”
One of my life mottos these days is “trust the process.” It’s gained this esteemed status – even earning a spot as my phone’s background for a while – because, well, I’m no good at it. I tend to be a jump-to-the-end kind of person. I want to know the outcome now and I want to have gotten there yesterday. The icky, frustrating, blurry unknown of a middle drives me crazy.
Yet, the process is important. It’s where collaboration happens. It’s where clarity happens. It’s where learning happens.
My life motto came and smacked me in the face last week as I was working to wrap up my summer internship project of illustrating Floricane’s leadership philosophy and model. I’ve spent the past few weeks chewing it over with John and team. Model #1 turned into model #2. Model #2 was long outdone by model #3, #4 and #5. As I brought the latest model to the team, the sharpies and blank paper came out to iterate yet another model. Even as we sat down with the graphic designer to turn the models over to him, we ended up scrapping model #6 and going back to model #4.
I reminded myself to trust the process.
Do I wish we could have easily illustrated the model three weeks ago? Sure, but there’s a lot to leadership, and it’s hard to simplify a philosophy into a clear and concise visual. It would have been nice, but we wouldn’t have learned what’s really central to Floricane. I wouldn’t have been challenged to really thread out those core principles. Instead, there was a whole lot of learning, clarity, and collaboration. We may not quite be at the end, even now, but we’re close and the product is better for it.
To add a little more humor to the situation, as I looked down at my notebook, I saw the yellow post-it note with a reminder for my presentation glaring back up at me. Sure enough, there it was: “the process is the product.”
I’m so wise.
