Trash Jenga: What Small Tasks Reveal About Leadership

Kathleen Fitzpatrick
4/20/2026

There was a trash can in our office.

One that seemingly had a hangover from the office lunch and could barely keep its contents from defacing the surrounding area. And more than once, I watched leaders and staff walk right past it.

It was Mount Trashmore.

And I watched as they piled trash on top like they were playing a game of Trash Jenga, precariously topping a cup or a plate or a takeout container until no more could be balanced, leaving excess refuse on the counter like discarded game pieces.

And then they just walked away.

As I packed up to leave, I had a choice. Do I participate in this monument to collective apathy, leaving my overpriced latte cup on top like a flag on the summit? Or do I call it into cleaning, log a ticket with maintenance, or find out whose job it was?

I put my stuff down and took out the damn trash.

And as I collected the carcasses of our commitment to single-use items (guilty as charged), and made my way to the Bin of Future Generations’ Problems, I had a thought that had been honed by the razor of experience.

At what point are you just too important to take out the trash?

And as a card-carrying overthinker, I took that thought further. At what point in business are people too important to deal with the issue staring them in the face?

Because here is what actually bothers me. Every person who contributed to that can, or walked past it, made a decision. At every point in their personal decision-making matrix, they chose to leave it. A problem they literally created with their own hands. And so it sat, waiting for the person who didn’t put a single thing in it, who is most certainly paid less and works far harder for a living. Or worse, someone took the time to call it in, log a ticket, or find out whose job it was supposed to be.

If the system is so apathetic to issues literally staring a team in the face, or so bloated that a simple task becomes a process so rigid it topples under its own weight, what kind of environment has a leader created?

What Gets Accepted

Here is the part that keeps me up at night.

Nobody decided to stop caring. There was no huddle, meeting, or memo where leadership announced the “Excellence Is Optional” policy. It happened quietly. Creep. Institutional rot, one small bit of decay at a time. Tacitly accepted if not ignored entirely.

At some point, general malaise crept in, and walking past became acceptable. Not policy, not intention. Just the way things worked around there.

And the people closest to the work? Were they held to the same standard, purpose, and passion as the original entrepreneur? Or did the business find itself in the hands of those more content with the trappings of the role? The office. The title. The 9 to 5. And a team of staff to pile tasks onto.

Stewards of a calendar, a task board, or a ticket system. Not of a legacy.

What the Entrepreneur Forgot

Apathy nearly always affects the bottom line.

There is a version of this story that plays out in this industry more than anyone wants to admit.

It starts with an idea. Passion meets purpose meets a single-minded focus on perfection and star ratings, and out of this union comes a mindset where every detail matters. An operational petri dish where purpose and drive create an environment for excellence to incubate and flourish.

And excellence breeds growth. And growth drives new processes. New hires. New job titles. Managers. Directors. VPs. Moving on up to the oceanfront penthouse view.

And inertia sets in. Growth begets more growth. And more hires. And more processes, meetings, and calls. Management creates more management, which creates distance, intentionally, because that is what scale is supposed to look like.

But somewhere in the hallowed halls of excellence, mediocrity creeps in.

Standards start to slip. Quietly. Often unintentionally, but usually never unnoticed. Not with malice or ill intent. More by busy people, burdened by too many tasks involving too many processes, from an ever-expanding chorus of leadership voices singing a tune that sounds familiar, but nothing like the original version. That was a classic.

And the purpose and passion, the strive for perfection, the mindset and dogged discipline to get there, get buried under institutional weight meant to safeguard it.

There are many voices that call this tragic story arc leadership and sell it through polished slide decks and slick presentations. But here is the question I want to ask every single one of them. Does your business still feel like the one you created in those first few years? Or does it resemble the one I just described?

Do you still take out the trash?

What Great Leadership Actually Looks Like

Newsflash. Trash is a symptom, not the disease.

Here is the irony. The people who build great businesses in this industry are rarely the ones who colored inside the lines. They broke rules. They improvised. They bet on themselves when nobody else would.

And then when it comes time to hire the people who will steward what they built, they choose safety. Profit over passion. Predictability over purpose. The resume over the person.

And the thing they built to be extraordinary gets handed to someone hired to be careful.

A great leader in this industry is hard to explain. But you know them when you see them. They are in the office before everyone else. Hands-on. Head down. They never make it about themselves. There is no cult of personality. No personal brand carefully curated for a conference stage.

Great leaders are not thought leaders. They are too busy doing.

I am a woman often judged by her resume, not her capability. The best people I have ever worked with did not always look the part on paper. They looked the part in the work.

Any person who understands the depth of responsibility of leadership and tries to avoid it out of fear might just be the person you need. Find them early. Develop them deliberately.

And if you look up one day and find your team walking past the small things, not paying attention, not handling what is right in front of them, do not look at them first.

Look in the mirror.

The Question Behind the Trash Can

Here is what I have learned from watching this industry up close, from both sides of the desk, from the bottom of the org chart, and from the top.

Leaders sign up to lead people more than they sign up to rent a home. And people are harder than properties. They require attention, honesty, and someone willing to have the difficult conversation without making it personal. There is a fine line between calling out a deficiency and tearing someone down. A real leader knows the difference. If you do not, that is the first place to start.

Here is the part that should keep you up at night. The further the distance grows between where you started and where you are today, the easier it becomes to believe your own story. Your mission, vision, and values look great on the website. But is the product the same? Is the passion? The purpose? The promise you made to your owners, your guests, and your team on day one?

Ask your employees what they see. Ask your owners. Ask the guests who came back, and the ones who did not.

The smallest tasks often expose the biggest issues.

So let’s go back to that trash can.

Trash Jenga looks small. It is not. It is leadership in plain sight. And the culture that follows is built exactly the same way. One small choice, one shrug, one "not my job" at a time.

Here’s my question for you. Are you too important to take out the trash?

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Want to dig into leadership topics even further? The eighth annual VRMA Executive Summit will be held May 11-13 at the Terranea Resort in Rancho Palos Verdes, California. This event is where the short-term rental industry’s top leaders step away from their day-to-day operations to focus on what matters most: the future of their business. Learn more and register.

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