When the Steps Don’t Make It Easier

There's a program running in the background of most human minds that whispers: just give me the steps and I can do anything. And its corollary: if you don't give me clear steps, you can't expect me to know what to do — or to get it "right." Business books, parenting books, leadership frameworks — they all feed this hunger. Break tasks into manageable pieces. Create clear pathways for those in your care. As truisms go, it's not wrong. It's just not always true. And I say that as someone who has demanded the steps and tried to create them for others more times than I can count.

The craving runs deeper than productivity. It comes from a largely unconscious rootstock: the belief that there is a right way, a best way, the most efficient way — and that you will be weeded out, publicly embarrassed, left behind if you don't find it. No pressure though! Clear steps feel like certainty, right? And certainty, we've decided as a culture, is safety. I get it. I still fall for it occasionally. And a recent walk with wolves gave me a vivid experience of the fallacy embedded in it.

Yes. I said wolves.

I was hiking through high desert north of Los Angeles with dear colleagues. We were being led by wolves through their sanctuary, up and down hillsides, alongside a creek, and ultimately onto a bluff with a long, gorgeous view. The trail followed what was likely an established wildlife path that humans had helped along by cutting steps into the steeper sections — designed to stabilize the hillside and create shortcuts between elevations, making it easier for hikers to navigate.

If your gait matched the steps.

We were moving single file, a loose cadence, people ahead and behind, nobody wanting to slow the group. The steps looked obvious on approach. Logically placed, even easy. But I watched person after person pause at the base or the top to strategize — myself included. What read as simple from a distance turned complicated on contact. Suddenly you had a choice: struggle slowly up steps built for someone else's stride and strength, or find your own line — winding, technically longer, but faster and more efficient for getting you to the same place on time.

Steps don't guarantee ease. Sometimes they create more work, not less. I wish someone had put that in a book for me years ago!

So here's the invitation — for you, and honestly, for me too — whether you're leading at home or in the business world: pay attention to the shortcuts you're building that aren't actually short for the people walking them. The steps that look efficient and logical but don't suit the stride of the people who have to use them. Are the people behind you struggling to keep cadence, too focused on foot placement to take in the view? Or have you left room — literally and figuratively — for them to find their own path to the bluff?

The goal was always the bluff. And the wolves already knew that.