Wow it’s September already! How ya been? My excuses for not posting in a while are all valid and award winning. Basically I got busy and needed to focus on other things. Sorry.

Our local trails group, Mancos Trails Group, has been busy all summer with multiple trail work days. Today we spent over 5 hours in the pine forest of the Lost Chicken trail. Flags had been set across 2 miles of trail where drainage was an issue.

We continue to have impressive volunteer turnout for these work days. Lots of people and people who are motivated to get shit done. We flagged out more area than we though could be completed and still managed to get everything done. Amazing.

Managing volunteers is tricky as no one is getting paid. You need to give direction and guidance but then need to keep everything light and fun so they don’t go home.

It seems this is how all management should be approached but when money is attached we feel the need to change tactics. Money adds incentive and stress which can lead to irrational thoughts and actions. The worst offense being micromanament. That beast with infinite heads and endless annoyance.

Delegation requires trust and faith. Starting from there we give people an opportunity to succeed or fail. Once one of those happens we can either revise what went wrong or move onto the next stage. Rinse. Iterate. Repeat.