The Pruning Season
There is always a better way.
Pruning is the disciplined work of questioning, changing or cutting back what no longer supports healthy growth.
That may mean an outdated process, an unnecessary rule, an unproductive meeting—or one of our own leadership habits. Pruning is not change for the sake of change. It protects what matters while making room for something better.
Sometimes the branch that needs pruning is not dead. It may simply be growing in the wrong direction.
From Habit to Healthier Growth
Pruning asks us to notice what is no longer serving the work - and have the courage to change it.
SELF
What habit, assumption or behavior of mine may need pruning?
What am I continuing simply because it is familiar?
What might I need to stop doing to make room for something better?
TEAM
What process, meeting or practice is creating unnecessary friction?
What are we tolerating because “that’s how we’ve always done it”?
What small improvement could we test together?
ORGANIZATION
What system, rule or tradition may be protecting the past more than supporting the future?
Are our standards still serving their original purpose?
What evidence would tell us a change is producing healthier growth?
A Story from the Orchard
There is always a better way.
My first real job was at UPS. I began loading package cars before moving into supervision. The Lansing preload started around 4:00 in the morning, and nearly everything was measured—the unloading, sorting, movement and loading of thousands of packages before the drivers left for their routes.
Like a carefully choreographed ballet, each step had to precisely hit an engineered rate. UPS was an organization of demanding standards and deeply established methods.
Every newly promoted supervisor received a serial-numbered, leather-bound policy manual. In the manual was a collection of sayings and observations that defined the UPS way. Included in that was our stated mission of constant improvement.
We knew the only way we made money was when the parcel was moving. When it stopped, it hemorrhaged cash. That was the system. And we accepted it.
It answered a basic, critical question:
“Why are we doing it this way?”
How do we provide the best possible service at the best possible cost?
That lesson appeared repeatedly throughout my years at UPS.
Package cars were once loaded in four broad sections. Later, the shelves were divided into more precise locations—1A, 1B, 2A, 2B—until packages could eventually be loaded in stop-by-stop order. Each improvement helped drivers find packages more quickly and serve customers more effectively.
UPS also created Earn and Learn, offering college students wages, health insurance and tuition assistance while helping the company staff demanding part-time operations.
None of these improvements began by lowering expectations. They began when someone looked at an accepted way of working and asked whether there might be a better one.
As my mentor Don Karns always told me:
“Go look. There is a better way.”
Inside that old UPS policy manual was a sentence I have remembered throughout my career:
“Determined people working together can accomplish anything.”
Pruning taught me that determined people must occasionally challenge the very methods that once made them successful.
We honor the past by learning from it - not becoming trapped inside it.
Take a Look at What Needs Pruning
Healthy growth sometimes requires us to let go of what once worked.
Consider one process, habit, assumption or standard that may need your attention.
The free Pruning Season worksheet will help you identify a recurring source of friction, decide what may need to change, design a small experiment and choose the evidence you will use to judge whether the change is producing healthier growth.