A work (and life) lesson from fixing fences and picking blackberries

How many times have you started work on a new project or client, and it turned out that you needed a different strategy, or different tools and or even to start again altogether?

Today I have a story about fences, blackberries and prep work. I had the idea for this story at the end of the August bank holiday, but as this is my first proper working Monday for quite a while, it’s a few weeks late.

The three-day weekend in August was earmarked to put up a new fence in the garden. The old fence had been taken down, neighbours consulted and the new fence pieces ordered, delivered and painted. A special machine for digging fence post holes was hired for the weekend. All prepared, or so I thought.

Things didn’t go to plan. The first day was spent fixing a part of the existing fence so that it could accommodate the new fence. On the next day, when trying to dig holes for the fence posts, we discovered that the boundary of the garden was lined with roots from long-gone trees and a surprising amount of concrete.

I was tasked with clearing the plants down the side of the garden to create space for the fence. I was reluctant to do this as the area is overgrown with blackberry brambles and I didn’t want them to go to waste. So I rescued as many blackberries as possible, getting covered in scratches in the process.

In the meantime, my boyfriend was exhausted trying to dig through concrete and tree roots with no joy (and lost several drill bits in the process). He used the special fence post digging machine on just one fence post.

Amongst all the fence-building frustration, I harvested dozens of blackberries. I shared them with our neighbours and made a cake with my share. And while I was looking at the half-built fence and eating my cake, I thought - this whole situation reminds me of work.

This is what we should have done with the fence:

1. Repaired the part of the fence that we were keeping.

2. Investigated the land around the fence and dug a few holes.

3. And then bought all the necessary equipment for the job.

Basically - better prep work. And this happens all the time in business.

You think you have done the prep work, but it’s just surface-level investigation.

How many times have you started work on a new project or client, and it turned out that you needed a different strategy, or different tools and or even to start again altogether?

It’s not necessarily malicious or intentional, it’s just how things go sometimes. A client can tell me they have all their email marketing up to date, compliant and running correctly, but until I start work and do some investigation, I probably won’t know for sure. I’ve worked for big companies that have spent ££££ on due diligence for an acquisition and still found skeletons in the closet.

And just like the fence-drama led to the blackberry harvest, digging deeper in work is often fruitful too. You get a better understanding of customer needs and what the business is trying to achieve.

My lesson to myself is not to get too frustrated when it turns out I need to do extra prep work.

A month on, the fence is still not finished but what’s been done looks great. And there have been many blackberry harvests since, resulting in one more blackberry cake and an apple and blackberry crumble.