Are You Building Staircases to Nowhere?

I’ve been listening to Rabbi Angela Buchdahl’s memoir Heart of a Stranger. She shared a story that stuck with me. The story about the Winchester House.

The Winchester Mystery House

You may have heard of Sarah Winchester’s house. The heir to the Winchester rifle fortune, she bought a farmhouse in San Jose, California, and never stopped building. For 38 years, construction went on around the clock. The house grew to 160 rooms, 2,000 doors, and 47 staircases. Famously, some of those staircases lead nowhere. Some doors open to blank walls. Some open to a two-story drop to the yard below. She reportedly kept the builders working 24 hours a day.

Why this story stuck with me is Rabbi Buchdahl’s observation: Sarah Winchester never stopped to look at what she’d built. She just kept building.

She didn’t get to enjoy her house as a home. Now a tourist attraction. People go to look at it — and laugh a little, and marvel a little, and feel something unnerving about it.

Are you building staircases to nowhere?

It reminded me of the frenzy of activity I see in my clients. And in myself. There is a relentless drive to do more, be more, build more. The next initiative. The next hire. The next campaign. The next goal. Being busy is seen as good. Pausing is seen as bad or weakness.

But without pausing — without actually stopping to look back over what you’ve created — it’s surprisingly easy to end up with an organization full of oddities like staircases to nowhere.

Things that seemed urgent when you built them but nobody uses. Rooms that don’t connect to anything. Projects that dropped off, never quite finished.

The Power of the Pause

One of the best things about coaching — being coached myself or coaching others — is the pause that each call becomes. Many of us come to a coaching call filled with the drive to prove ourselves. Or as my colleague Dr. Sarah Glova says, we try to “win” at coaching.

But a professional coach sees through the busy and helps us stop the rambling or the attempt to impress. A skilled coach helps us pause. To see what we’re building. And to question what might be the right next step.

And we experience the reality that pausing is not weakness. It’s really one of the most important things a leader can do.

Where will You Take a Pause Today?

So here’s the question: Where are you taking a pause today?

A pause doesn’t have to be a week-long retreat. It doesn’t even have to be an hour. It could start with two minutes of sitting still and focusing on your breathing.

Better still, could you put a repeating appointment with yourself on your calendar? A time to stop, look back, and actually take in what you and your team have created?

Because the alternative is a house that draws crowds. But not for the reasons you intended.

Here’s to building things that actually go somewhere.