7 Paths Blog

My earliest memory of a path, at age five, was of one that wound up a mountain from the small Montana village we lived in to the dump above the town. There was a road that went up to the dump but there was also a faint foot path. Ever since then I have been fascinated by paths.

When my three children were young I took them on an adventure for two hours a week. It gave Sarah a chance to be home alone and gave me time to be with the children.

One of my favorite activities on adventure was to drive down obscure back roads to see where they went. One day this led to a real adventure. We were half a mile from anywhere on a road that was little more than a track when our radiator over-heated. This was before cell phones and no one knew where we were. There was a creek nearby but I couldn’t get to it because of my disability. I coached Hannah, our eldest, who was probably five at the time, to carry cups of water from the creek that I added to the radiator. Eventually, we had enough water in the radiator that I could drive us home.

A few years ago, when I began teaching about leadership and organizations, I found myself using the metaphor of paths to describe patterns in organizations that a leader can use to help the organization thrive.

Here are the musings of Dick Richards on “The Mythic Pull Of Pathways.” Thanks, Terry, for pointing me to Dick’s musings.