The Far Corner

For years I parked in the same spot. Top floor of the deck, far corner, the longest walk to the building. Every office I ever worked, whatever the job, whatever the title, same choice. Take the hard spot. Make the walk.

Then we came back from COVID and the deck was empty. Most days it still is. Nobody was there to take the good spots, so I started taking them. Floor one, up front, doors to desk in under a minute.

One morning a few weeks in, I pulled into that front spot and just sat there. My head was full of the usual. I am tired of this. I am tired of that. The weight you carry gets heavy no matter what you do, and that morning I was feeling all of it.

And I caught myself. The thing I was tired of, when I actually looked at it, was almost always the same thing. It was the effort of doing something right when something easier was sitting right there.

Doing the right thing is not the opposite of doing the wrong thing. Most days nobody is choosing wrong. The right thing is the opposite of the easy thing, and that is what makes it hard.

I pulled out of the front spot, drove back up to the top, and parked in the far corner.

The parking deck is the small version. Here is the one that cost me something.

The last three years, the easy path was right in front of us. Hand people a course library, point them at it, let them learn on their own, and call it enablement. Nobody would have blamed us. The team was buried building the capability for what comes next.

We did it the other way. A regional executive assistant taught herself the new tools, then set out to champion them for her whole region. She asked me for help, so I gave her the sessions, shaping her content until the meetings she ran for every employee landed clean. Her title said nothing about any of this. She just decided to lead, and she did it better than people whose job it was.

When our business leaders asked for a session we had never built, on curating content you can trust, on growing a career, on making your work mean something, we built it from nothing. A full playbook. One real example carried from a blank page all the way to finished, made for that room and no other.

Did we have time for any of it? Not a chance. We did it anyway, because it was right, and right was not easy.

The good spot is always open now. That is exactly why I drive past it.

Park at the top.