Gardeners will argue amongst themselves until eternity about the best way to care for a lawn. Some will cut it to within a centimetre of its life whilst others will stipulate it should be exactly 2" and fed every third day with a proven lawn food. In short there is plenty of room for movement in how you care for your lawn and whilst this is important and something that we will come back to, you need to look at the bigger picture at this stage and ask yourself wht is the function of the lawn.
Consider this, Your business structure has many departments, with many skills and areas of responsibilities. These responsibilities require a formal definition to allow individual accountability to be clear and that core structure, the central cohesive heart is in gardening terms the lawn. The lawn sits in the garden, surrounded by a hundred other goings on and provides the stability that every garden needs. The lawn is of one colour, your business goals should be of a unifying single colour, too may varieties of grass seed and it will appear patchy, uncertain and a mess.
Like a lawn you should ensure that the edges are clearly defined, this avoids confusion as to where the boundaries are and prevents staff in departments over spilling their areas of authority. The edge should be absolutely crisply cut preventing anyone from mistaking where their border ends and furthermore the lawn needs to be revisited monthly (more in peak times) to review if any plant is encroaching on the border. This is an important task as in busy times it is easy to let the core business goals grow long and straggly or worse still dry up and become a withered version of themselves. However flexibility is important and if you are finding that one or two primroses are seeding themselves on the edge of the lawn with a splay of colour well don't mow over them with your dogma lawn mower, but review their progress and re-evaluate that boarder. When it is the right time an individual will, all of a sudden, flourish and you should allow a little 'give' at this point whilst being mindful that the encroachment could take over. Give it a little time and if a whole new border develops then utilise it, re-defining your business goals to suit the new or revitalised department.
Most people in your business like to know their place in the scheme of things (the border) but wish to stay fully engaged with others in the company and the lawn is the area that all interaction can occur. Look after this area and all the others become that little bit easier to manage.
.
