faithpeterson

The conference room felt smaller each month. The arms of Jordan's chair seemed somehow tighter as the steering committee circled back to the same concern. Billing project. Six months. Nothing to show. The executive sponsor's voice cut through stale air: “What's your plan to get this back on track?”

Jordan's throat tightened. Resource constraints. Scope clarification. The words felt rehearsed, hollow. Around the table, other managers spoke with confidence. Jordan offered only explanations. Reasons? Excuses? Whatever people thought they were, Jordan was sure they seemed less and less credible as the weeks wore on.

Fluorescent lights flickered around the edges of Jordan's vision. The room offered nothing to hold on to. Nowhere to hide. Jordan's shoulders rose as their neck tightened.

Jordan ran through the possible intervention. There didn't seem to be many levers to pull. More oversight. Better metrics. Daily status reports – lines of code, bug counts, developer commits, tests run. Something concrete Alex's team could deliver every morning. Get more visibility into what was really happening.

Billing project problems crowded everything else out of Jordan's mind. They didn't notice the grass encroaching on the flower bed. The bright zinnias usually lightened Jordan's step. Today they might as well not have been there. Barely tasted their dinner, whatever it was. That evening Jordan opened their laptop backpack, hesitated, then pulled it out and typed: “Effective immediately, please provide daily reports including number of commits with files updated and defect metrics.” The cursor blinked. Send.

The corporate gym was a dark sweaty little room off a basement utility corridor. The ceiling felt heavy and low as Jordan stepped onto the treadmill. Chest tight. Breathing shallow. The walls pressed close. Other members moved past in peripheral vision, but Jordan saw only the small display screen – minutes elapsed, calories burned, distance covered. Never enough distance.

At home, Jordan hovered over their teenager's homework. Scheduled study blocks. Removed distractions. Implemented reward systems. Their child's bedroom door stayed closed now. The house felt smaller each evening.

Vacation planning: spreadsheets. Optimal routes. Maximum value restaurants. Jordan's spouse stopped offering suggestions. Conversations grew shorter. The kitchen table became a command center for controlling variables that refused to be controlled.

Morning commute: three traffic apps. Alternate routes. Hands gripping the steering wheel tighter when nothing helped. The car felt like a capsule, sealed against a world that wouldn't cooperate.

The daily reports from Alex arrived each morning. Numbers accumulated on Jordan's screen – files created, lines changed, infrastructure definitions added, APIs updated, queuing ripped out to be replaced by pub/sub, bugs logged and resolved. The metrics looked fine, but the project felt more stuck than ever. Developers talked to each other less, leaned back staring at their screens more. It seemed like Alex wasn't around as much. Were they avoiding conversations? If so, Jordan felt relieved. They had demanded visibility and gotten it, but somehow that made everything worse.

Saturday morning. Jordan stood, one hand on their hip, the other on the mower handle, surveying the perfect lawn. Edges razor-straight. Hedges in geometric formation. Every blade of grass at attention. A performance for neighbors who rarely glanced over. The fleeting moment of control didn't seem as satisfying as it once did.

As Jordan wheeled the mower to the back yard the looser, more natural landscape opened. Jordan let out a deep sigh, and all the leaves fluttered in welcome. Sometimes it seemed to Jordan as if every problem could disappear here like a soaking rain. Here, among tomato plants and wildflower patches, the world expanded. No straight lines. No controlled shapes. Jordan knelt among seedlings they'd been nurturing since spring, hands working soil that felt alive beneath their fingers.

Jordan plucked some tiny weeds, divided the Joe-Pye weed. It would need space to nurture more monarch butterflies next season. Jordan added trellis hammocks to cradle the squash and melons. The sunflowers, given the right conditions, grew straight and strong, turning toward the sun. They rewarded Jordan's patient attention and trust in what would emerge.

Jordan remembered cradling their teenager as an infant. The way they felt that awful, joyful, heavy, exhilarating love they expressed with careful presence and protective tenderness. The faith in natural unfolding. When had Jordan stopped trusting that process? When had love become control?

Jordan chose a ripe red tomato and scanned the exuberantly flourishing landscape under the cobalt sky. A long, cool shower to rinse the day away would be just the thing to relax into an evening of salad and fireflies on the patio.

Monday's steering committee meeting felt different before Jordan spoke. The same conference room, but somehow it felt more spacious. Instead of defending daily metrics, Jordan found themselves asking: “What would help you feel confident we're moving in the right direction?”

The question surprised everyone, including Jordan. It had emerged from some deeper place than prepared responses.

“What's the smallest piece of this system we could build that would demonstrate meaningful progress?” Jordan's voice carried curiosity rather than defensiveness. The sponsor leaned forward. Other committee members looked up from their phones. The conversation shifted from interrogation to exploration.

After the meeting, Jordan took the long way to Alex's office. Through windows, they glimpsed something they'd never noticed before – a small fountain in the courtyard, water flowing over smooth stones. How many times had they rushed past without seeing?

“Those daily reports,” Jordan said to Alex. “Let's stop them. I've been thinking about our project all wrong.” Alex looked up, surprised. “What if we started over with what you think might actually work?”

What followed was the first real conversation they'd had in months. Alex shared frustrations Jordan had never heard: requirements that kept shifting, stakeholders who wanted everything but couldn't prioritize anything, a team that felt like they were building documentation instead of software. Jordan listened without defending, without solving, just taking it in.

“There's someone I'd like you to meet,” Alex said finally. “Terry's been helping some other teams figure out how to stop planning and start creating. I've been thinking of asking them to see if they can suggest anything for us.”

For the first time, Jordan felt like they were on the same side, pulling together instead of playing tug-of-war on opposite sides of the status report's decreasingly meaningful metrics. Alex's relief was visible, shoulders dropping like Jordan's had in the garden. They were talking about actual work instead of metrics about work, two people trying to understand what success might look like together.

Walking back, Jordan heard the fountain's gentle sound drifting through glass doors they'd never thought to open.

Two weeks later, Jordan sat in the courtyard after another project meeting, discovering the walking path that wound between established trees and native plantings. The fountain's rhythm matched their breathing – steady, unhurried, finding its own level.

The meeting had felt completely different. Alex had demonstrated the very first user-visible functionality. The developers spun up the server in front of everyone. Browser activity, server activity, latency, transaction volume, all updated in plain sight. It was rough but real. The team was excited, eager to share what they'd created and welcoming the ideas and comments the demo inspired. Jordan had barely spoken during the demo. Their presence felt supportive rather than supervisory. Not above the conversation or below it, but alongside it, part of the collective discovery of the emerging system.

They realized they'd brought their gardening self to work – patient, nurturing, trusting growth rather than demanding it. The daily reports had been about Jordan's anxiety, not the team's progress. Real development happened when Jordan stopped measuring it and started supporting it.

At home, their teenager had begun leaving the bedroom door open during homework time. Jordan's spouse shared vacation ideas again. Small openings, but Jordan felt the difference everywhere – less gripping, more space for what was already trying to unfold.

Monday stretched ahead with possibility, with the expansive promise of another day spent tending what mattered. Not smarter management or servant leadership, but something else entirely – patient attention, supporting the team, trusting in the universal impulse to create, and create together.