Have you ever been on a walk in your neighborhood, in a park, or in the woods and seen a bag of dog poop just sitting on the sidewalk?
I have.
So. Many. Times.
I genuinely do not understand it. Why would someone take the time to stop the dog, get a bag out, put their hand inside out in the bag, pick up the up dog poop, put it into a bag, and then tie it neatly only to leave it on the sidewalk? Sometimes right next to a garbage can!
I am truly asking: what am I missing here?
If you’re not going to throw it away, I’d much rather you scoot it into the grass so the rain can at least get to it over preserving it in a neon-green monument to an unfinished responsibility.
And no, this answer doesn’t count: “They’re just going to pick it up on their way back.”
I’m talking about the ones that sit there for hours. Sometimes days. In the same spot. Slowly becoming part of the landscape.
(And yes, I have picked up a stranger’s bag of poop and thrown it away when I was close enough to a can even though I no longer have a dog. For those of you thinking, “Why don’t you just pick it up?”)
I’m not only trying to understand if I’m missing some simple logic here. I’m also interested in how this represents what can happen at work.
We Don’t Ignore Problems. We Bag Them.
Most organizations are not ignoring their problems.
They see them.
They acknowledge them.
They discuss them.
They document them.
They put them in a system.
They assign a name.
They add a due date.
They schedule a meeting.
Then, they bag the problem and leave it on the sidewalk.
Everyone can see it.
Everyone steps around it.
Everyone knows it shouldn’t be there, but somehow… it stays.
The Bag Feels Like Responsibility
At work, the “bag” looks like:
- A Jira ticket
- A project tracker
- A steering committee
- A parking lot item
- A roadmap dependency
- A backlog
- A task force
- A “we’ll circle back”
The bag makes us feel like we did something, but it’s not the same as resolution.
We confuse motion for progress.
We confuse process for ownership.
We confuse documentation for action.
So the problem sits there.
Neatly packaged.
Perfectly labeled.
Still stinking up the joint.
The Sidewalk Is Full of These
Every organization has them.
The broken process everyone works around.
The toxic behavior everyone avoids being real about.
The system no one wants to touch.
The decision no one wants to make.
The role that was never clearly defined.
The customer issue that keeps resurfacing.
They’ve all been bagged. They just haven’t been taken to the trash.
Leadership Is Carrying the Bag
Leadership is carrying that bag to the garbage can.
Even when it’s awkward.
Even when it smells.
Even when it’s uncomfortable.
Even when no one thanks you for it.
Questions Worth Asking
- Where in your organization are there little green bags of unresolved problems lining the path?
- What’s been carefully packaged, labeled, and tracked, but never actually dealt with?
At some point, someone has to stop stepping around it and just take it out. (Then make sure that it doesn’t keep happening 😉
Additional Reading:
- Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us
- The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation, and Growth
- Reinventing Organizations: A Guide to Creating Organizations Inspired by the Next Stage in Human Consciousness
- The Art of Possibility: Transforming Professional and Personal Life
- Leaders Eat Last
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HG People 
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