The sign read: Plants grow by the inch and die by the foot. How clever! It was a catchy way of asking people to stay on the trail that leads out from the Mt. St. Helens observatory into the mountains. The trail is pretty narrow and the tendency of many would be to trample the plants to get around others in their way. Killing plants that took time to grow.
In business, it is really easy to kill ideas or discourage people by trying to be expeditious. There are times when ideas and people need to be nurtured. And at those times, having an explicit view of how they will be protected is critical to their success.
How are you making sure your ideas and people aren’t growing by the inch and dying by the foot?