Build That Wall

The Newhouse Wildlife Rescue in Massachusetts had a video go viral last week.

The video features Nibi, a resident rescued beaver who recently got a new beaver roommate, Ziibi. It seems that Nibi and Ziibi didn’t immediately hit it off.

In fact, Nibi hated Ziibi’s guts.

So the Newhouse staff decided to separate them for a while to cool things off and took Ziibi out of the room they had been sharing and put her outside in an attached enclosure.

As soon as Ziibi was outside, Nibi couldn’t stand still.

Let me set the scene: The internal enclosure is room with a tiled floor with cages, food bowls and toys to keep the beavers occupied. They also keep a bunch of sticks laying around, because...beavers like sticks.

Nibi immediately started gathering every stick she could find and started to build a dam in the doorway to keep Ziibi out.

One by one she’d pick up a stick and flip flap her little beaver feet across the tile floor and start stacking them upon the doorway.

She had to build it. Now.

It wasn’t perfect.

It wasn’t pretty.

Maybe it wouldn’t even work.

But she had to start because this was her chance to carve out her territory.

Teddy Roosevelt once said, “Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.”

When we have a troublesome new competitor or business challenge, we often hesitate, doubting whether we have exactly the right answer.

We weigh whether we are in exactly the right place in time to work on it.

We might spend hours pondering the decisions we have to make or the resources that we might need.

We’ll take an inordinate amount of time designing what will be the perfect solution.

But to carve out your territory, you just have to start.

You do what you can.

With what you have.

Where you are.

It’s not going to be perfect.

Or pretty.

Hell, it might not even work.

But starting is better than standing still.