Did Anyone Throw a Stick?
One afternoon, I watched a group of dogs at a park suddenly break into a full sprint.
Something had their attention.
Tails up. Ears back. Full speed.
One dog took off first. A second followed. Then a third. Within seconds, half a dozen dogs were racing across the field as if responding to some urgent mission.
The funny thing was that nobody had thrown a stick.
No ball.
No frisbee.
No command.
No obvious reason at all.
One dog started running, and the others assumed there must be a purpose.
Watching them, I couldn’t help but think about organizations.
Most people imagine that confusion in organizations looks like people standing around doing nothing. In reality, it often looks exactly the opposite. Everyone is moving. Calendars are full. Meetings are scheduled. Emails are flying. Reports are being generated. Action items are multiplying.
From a distance, it looks productive.
Up close, nobody is entirely sure why they’re running.
Somewhere along the way, a project was started, a deadline was announced, a metric was introduced, or a crisis was declared. People began moving in response. Others joined because the movement creates its own momentum. Soon, entire teams are running hard without ever stopping to ask a simple question.
Did anyone actually throw a stick?
Dogs have an advantage over us.
When a dog loses sight of what it’s chasing, it often looks back at its handler.
Humans rarely do.
We tend to assume that if everyone else is running, there must be a reason. We trust the motion more than the mission.
The result is familiar to anyone who has worked in a large organization. Activity becomes confused with progress. Urgency becomes confused with importance. Being busy becomes evidence that something valuable must be happening.
Meanwhile, the original purpose may have disappeared long ago.
The best leaders I’ve worked with had a habit of stopping the chase.
Not to slow people down.
To make sure they were running toward something real.
They asked uncomfortable questions.
What problem are we solving?
Who asked for this?
What outcome are we trying to achieve?
How will we know when we’re done?
Simple questions. Yet they often revealed that an entire team had been sprinting across the field in pursuit of an objective nobody clearly understood.
A well-trained dog doesn’t chase every movement it sees. It learns to pay attention to its handler, its purpose, and its environment.
Organizations could benefit from the same discipline.
Because sometimes the smartest individual on the team isn’t the fastest runner.
It’s the one who pauses, looks around, and quietly asks:
“Did anyone throw a stick?”