Running A Red Light (Waiting For Permission, 1 of 3)2

(This post is part 1 of 3 posts on waiting for permission. Stay tuned for Green-Lighting Others and Nobody’s Going To Honk For You!)

To my friends in law enforcement, I have to apologize in advance for the analogy.

Sometimes you’ve got to run a red light.

I remember driving with my wife through a very small town late at night. We got to a traffic light (correction: the traffic light), and it was red. Forever. It never changed. No one came from the other direction. Ever. It was ghost town and it was Twilight Zone and we just sat there.

We came to the conclusion that the light wasn’t going to change. Not for us at least. If we wanted to get anywhere, we were going to have to go through the red light. We were waiting for permission that wasn’t coming.

So what are you waiting for? You have a dream – you have work to do. You have a solution to the roadblock at work. You have a breakthrough idea for your leadership team. You have a passion.

The light might always be red. You might never have permission. But you are driving somewhere, right? So waiting for permission might be like waiting at a red light in a small town.

You could blame others for not being given permission. But hey… you’ve got the steering wheel in your hands.

Run the red light.