Leadership has a way of revealing itself when you stop paying attention.
Not through dramatic failure or public missteps, but through slow, creeping neglect. The kind you don’t notice because everything still looks mostly fine, until it very much isn’t.
I was reminded of this standing in my backyard earlier this summer, looking at a space, I had once poured significant time, money, and care into: a beautifully designed, terraced garden and fire pit area completed in 2022. It was an ambitious project. Three carefully considered tiers supported by sandstone retaining walls. A wooden deck with stairs leading down to a bespoke bench that overlooked the valley. A fire pit at the center of it all, framed by a neat bamboo hedge that gave privacy without stealing the view.
It was not cheap. It was not accidental. It was designed with intention and executed by professionals who knew exactly what they were doing.
And for two years, I honoured that.
I maintained it. I weeded. I trimmed. I noticed small changes early and dealt with them before they became problems. The space worked because it was cared for.
Then, gradually, my attention shifted.
Nothing dramatic happened. I didn’t consciously decide to stop maintaining it. I simply deprioritised it. A week became a month. A quick trim became “later.” The assumption crept in that because it had been built well, it would somehow hold itself together.
That assumption is where many leadership problems begin.
When I finally went down there to light the BBQ, what I saw was confronting. The bamboo hedge was no longer controlled; it had become tangled and littered with weeds that had embedded themselves deeply. The fire pit, once the centerpiece, was almost completely overgrown. Even worse, weeds had begun pushing up from underneath the wooden bench, forcing their way through the slats and compromising the structure itself.
What struck me most wasn’t the mess. It was the realisation that this hadn’t happened suddenly. It had happened slowly, while I wasn’t looking.
I felt like I’d let myself down. And, strangely, like I’d let my landscape designer down too. Not because the design had failed, but because I had failed to uphold my side of the responsibility.
Leadership is exactly the same.
Strong teams, good culture, and effective systems don’t deteriorate overnight. They erode quietly. Through small standards not enforced. Feedback delayed. Behaviours tolerated because addressing them feels inconvenient or uncomfortable. Leaders often assume that because something was built well, it will remain strong without ongoing attention. It won’t.
Just like that fire pit, the core purpose is still there, but it becomes obscured. Harder to access. Less functional. And eventually, far more difficult to restore.
Fixing it required effort. I had to cut the bamboo back hard. Pull weeds out by the roots. Take parts of the bench apart to deal with what had crept underneath. It was time-consuming and, frankly, annoying. But as the clean lines re-emerged and the space became usable again, the value of that work was obvious.
The leadership lesson is simple, and uncomfortable: maintenance is not optional.
Good leadership isn’t only about vision, strategy, or building impressive things. It’s about the discipline of ongoing care. About noticing early signs of drift and acting before they become entrenched. About understanding that neglect, however unintentional, always has consequences.
The cost of maintenance is predictable. The cost of recovery is always higher.
If you’re leading people, projects, or organisations, the question is worth asking: where have you assumed something was “fine” simply because it used to be? What have you stopped tending because it wasn’t immediately screaming for attention?
Because weeds don’t announce themselves. They just keep growing, until you’re forced to deal with them.
And by then, the job is much bigger than it ever needed to be.
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