Most of our day is spent cleaning up messes we didn’t create, in businesses we don’t own, working with founders and teams who have a terrible habit of dragging their feet. 

To say this hasn’t been the ultimate personal development experience would be a gross understatement. 

A simple request, albeit one that would expose uncomfortable data, can take anywhere from 2-6 weeks to get a turnaround.

Clearly identified issues that need to be addressed to drive profitable growth are considered "later problems" because the founder can only see the bleeding neck in front of them, which is usually a symptom of the very thing we're trying to fix.

Hard decisions that challenge everyone's ego and ask them to see reality clearly, are justified with a laundry list of potential risks.

When the biggest risk of all is the lack of humility to accept reality as it is and course correct accordingly.

I jokingly refer to our team as “glorified janitors.” 

Working across various companies, personalities, and stages of business has forced me into a weekly if not daily practice of being able to delineate what is ours to be responsible for and what isn’t. 

I say it’s a practice because by no means is the acceptance of this easy or static.

Some weeks I'm better at it than others, and some weeks I want to flip every table in the building and walk out into the sun.

If I'm being honest, my frustration with other people's lack of urgency has never been purely professional. 

There's something about watching someone drag their feet on a problem you've already solved in your head — knowing what's coming, having said it clearly, and being unable to make them move — that activates something much older than the job. 

The helplessness isn't about the business or the problem at hand. It's about being unable to control what someone else's inaction might cost you.

You might be someone who sees things proactively. Who can spot the tornado on the horizon well before it gets to the fence line and the cows start spinning through the sky.

That's a gift.

One that's rarely appreciated with the reverence it deserves. People celebrate wins. Nobody claps for the fires that never started — or the person who quietly rerouted before anyone else smelled smoke.

Which means if you're that person, you already know the particular exhaustion of being right too early. Of watching something you named six months ago become the emergency everyone's scrambling to solve now.

That exhaustion is real. And it will eat you alive if you don't learn to put down what was never yours to carry.

The only thing you can do is communicate clearly. Full stop. 

You're not responsible for their agreement or their lack of willingness to act on what you've put in front of them. You are responsible for seeing it clearly, naming it honestly, and making sure the information got to the people who needed it.

What they do with it after that is not your job.

Easier said than done.

For most people who operate this way, letting go after you've said the thing feels like an impossible ask. It can feel like watching a car crash in slow motion with your hands tied behind your back.

That feeling is information. It's telling you that your nervous system has confused someone else's problem with your own survival.

And the real work is learning to feel that activation and not let it run you. To breathe through the urgency your body is creating in response to someone else's inaction and to remind yourself that their timeline is not your emergency.

You saw it. You said it. You documented it.

Your job is done.

Learn to let it be.