Become a guerilla

I recently read a piece in the weekend paper about a Los Angeles based enterprise that has converted a number of old vending machines into green machines that sell seed bombs. Greenaid (www.thecommonstudio.com/index.php?/project/greenaid/) hopes to promote guerilla gardening with people buying seeds which come in a mixture of clay and compost that can be thrown anonymously into derelict urban sites to reclaim and transform them. What a great idea!

There was actually an Australian TV show called “Guerilla Gardening” but it didn’t last long. Seems our councils didn’t take too kindly to the TV people showing them up. After all, if these guys can come in and transform an ugly piece of public land in a day what excuse does the council have?I think I might have to start performing random acts of guerilla gardening. Remind me to put some supplies in the boot of my car . . .

When I think about it, there have been times when I’ve performed random acts of guerilla workplace gardening. For example, giving advice to people who have leaders that can’t rely on, making suggestions to friends about ways to deal with difficult co-workers and encouraging people I meet at events to go for promotions.

What the guerillas are trying to teach us is that you don’t have to wait for permission to show leadership, you don’t have to be the official leader of a team to lead them and sometimes you need to jump in and take the lead when no one else is willing to tackle an issue. If you are passionate about making change happen and not prepared to wait around for someone else to do it then you have guerilla tendencies in you already. The question is: are you going to act on them?

So, what random acts of leadership could you perform? Are you prepared to go out on a limb to do them or are you too worried about what the workplace “council” will think?