Built to Beat Chaos

CHAPTER 6Order Is Easier to Create Than Keep

Catch the foxes for us, the little foxes that spoil the vineyards, for our vineyards are in blossom.

Song of Solomon 2

Hopefully, by this point in the book, you, as a leader, have more appreciation for the importance and the challenge of the work you and the people around you do. But there is another aspect of leadership that is even more difficult and that is the subject of this chapter.

The premise is this: It is more difficult to sustain something you have created than to create it. Nations rise and fall, companies come and go, churches flourish and die. Without diligent and wise effort, houses rot, marriages fail, and farmland turns to brush.

The premise is this: It is more difficult to sustain something you have created than to create it.

When asked what kind of government the constitutional convention had created, Benjamin Franklin stated, “a republic if you can keep it.” The 81‐year‐old Franklin understood the same principle this chapter addresses.

After years of struggle with England in a deadly war, the revolution birthed a nation. Although the war was chaotic, forming the nation was also chaotic. In Franklin's last speech to the Constitutional Convention, he said:

…when you assemble several men to have the advantage of their joint wisdom, you inevitably assemble with those men, their prejudices, passions, errors of opinion, local interests, and selfish views.

Constitution Center (https://constitutioncenter.org/learn/educational-resources/historical-documents/perspectives-on-the-constitution-a-republic-if-you-can-keep-it ...