Building Without Starting Again

Building

The temptation when things aren’t working is to begin afresh. It feels decisive.

But most things aren’t built on broken foundations.  Rather, they are unfinished buildings with parts that still hold, parts that need reinforcing, and parts that need to come down carefully rather than all at once.

More damage is done demolishing too much than by building too slowly. What gets lost in a reset isn’t immediately visible. It’s the institutional knowledge, the relationships, and the trust that took years to build quietly.

Progress asks a much harder question than “where do we start?” It asks “what’s still worth keeping?”

The answer to that question is where real progress begins.

David R. Smith