My boss recently went to Japan for the first time. She struggled with the food options, but more so with the lack of flexibility in restaurants. “Every time I asked them to change the smallest thing, they had to first ask their manager, then their manager’s manager, and on and on.”
Yesterday, I got dinner with friends here in Munich. One of us saw the dish she favored was marked with three chili peppers. She asked the waiter: “How spicy is three-chili-spicy?” The guy started laughing. “Oh, that’s not a problem, we can make it however spicy—or not spicy—you want. It’s not like it’s a premade dish!”
Following the rules and breaking them both have value. It merely depends on the time and the place. An administrator in a nuclear power plant might not want to press any button too quickly. For a waiter in a restaurant, it’s probably fine to use their judgment in determining what the customer really wants.
Turning our brains on or off is not a switch we press just once. We get to decide again every moment: Is it time to follow or time to lead? Above all, keep making that call. More often than not, you’ll find the universe picks up.
