What July Teaches

My garden in Franklin Park has two parts — raised beds and a stretch of ground garden — and by July, neither one needs anything interesting from me. Planting season is over. Harvest is mostly ahead. What's left is maintenance: pull the weeds before they take hold, water consistently, notice small problems while they're still small.

It took me longer than I'd like to admit to see that this is also the shape of a strategic engagement.

Every project has a beginning that generates its own energy — discovery conversations, new frameworks, the sense that something is being built. And every project has an end that generates its own accountability: deliverables, deadlines, a board meeting on the calendar. The middle has neither. The middle is where plans quietly fail.

Not dramatically. Nobody decides to abandon a strategic plan. It just stops getting weeded. The committee that met monthly starts meeting quarterly. The open decisions stay open. The small misalignment nobody flagged in June becomes the structural problem someone has to name in October.

The fix isn't complicated, but it is unglamorous: someone has to keep showing up when nothing is due. In my practice, that's often the most valuable thing I do — not the framework, not the facilitation, but the discipline of tending the middle. Asking, in July, the questions no one else has a reason to ask until December.

The garden doesn't reward brilliance. It rewards attention. So far, I haven't found a client engagement that works differently.

#StrategicPlanning #Implementation #Consulting Practice # Gardening