As you might suspect, pulling off an eight-day trip to China takes planning. There are the logistics of obtaining passport, visa, flights, insurance, hotels, ground transportation, admission and ticket info to various tourist spots, and more. In our effort to visit churches and take part in services, there was coordination to have participants from multiple churches celebrate with us in one place on days and times they would not normally gather . We needed to arrange an interpreter to be with us for such visits in order to speak to the congregations.
Such a trip could not happen without adequate planning and I am thankful for the several people involved in those efforts.
At the same time, there was an ongoing need for flexibility. We did not know, for example, that one church had prepared a dinner for us to eat after their service. We had other plans, but needed to quickly change them and graciously accept the dinner prepared by our hosts. When driving to one church, we were a bit surprised to find the road come to a dead end. We had to turn around and go a different way.
After another service in a rural area, someone suggested a different route back to the city that was about 20 kilometers shorter. We took that route only to find that it was a dirt road filled with huge potholes. Our 20-kilometer-shorter trip was suddenly plodding along at 5 miles per hour as we zigzagged down the road that others obviously knew to avoid. Twenty fewer kilometers doesn’t help if you have to reduce your traveling speed by from 60 to 5 mph.
Flexibility was needed regularly in order to accommodate gracious hosts and to take advantage of conversations that could not possibly be planned in advance.
In business, nonprofit or personal life, we have to make sure that we plan well in order to accomplish our objectives. But never allowing room for adjustments or last-minute changes is a mistake. We need to be sensitive to new possibilities – especially interpersonal ones – as they arise, and adjust for unpleasant surprises that will inevitably happen.
Leap year lesson #114 is Find a balance between planning and flexibility.
Next Practices 