Lessons from a Bird in the House

I get a phone call this morning while Eddie and I are at Starbucks chasing after all kinds of strategic beauty (or at least we like to think so). The call is from my wife saying that there is a bird in the house… came through the garage after a wind gust blew the door from the garage open. So, I run home to play knight in shining armor, I know quite impressive.

After chasing the bird all around the house and finally sending it to freedom (I can hear Braveheart, now), here are a few things I learned about leadership and experience as I try to recount some of the highlights:

1. When in a new situation, you quickly realize you wish you had counsel from someone who had been there before. As I was chasing the bird around, I thought many times…who could I call that knew how to do this. When you are a new experience, leadership situation seek out counsel and wisdom from someone who has been down the road before.

2. Choose the right tools. I entered the house with a shovel, leaf rake, and a bowl ready to catch the bird. The reality is I needed a big net but did not have one. I tried to “shoo” the bird around and out the door with the big rake, not only was it not successful, I sure felt awkward (and probably looked that way, too).

3. Narrow the job, project, task. A lot of times we take new projects and tasks that have too large of a scope. The teams I am a part of are always evaluating how we can simplify and accomplish more by doing less. After chasing the bird around the entire house from room to room, I finally realized to close the door to rooms that the bird was not in to eliminate the bird from going into another room. Then, once it flew into one of the bedrooms, I was able to close the door, limit it to one room, and then focus on getting it out of that one room instead of the whole house. I accomplished the task by narrowing the scope.

4. Keep your eyes on the prize. There were several times I lost sight of the prize…the bird as I was trying to move it out of the house. One time, it was on the chandelier in the foyer of the house, I threw a ball (choose the right tools) at it, it flew off and instead of watching where the bird went, I watched the ball. Then another time, I had the bird trapped in some blinds. As I was trying some nifty way to catch the bird, it escaped and I had no clue until minutes later when I realized it was not fluttering against the window anymore. By not keeping my eyes on the main thing, the process and getting to the “win” took longer.

5. Find an obvious and easy out for the problem. Once I finally got the bird located to just one room, I opened the window and removed the screen in just one of the windows. Then I approached the bird to try to capture it and took off right through the window and up to the sky. And after all the drama and work, it was sort of melodramatic because its flight through the window was so easy and sensible. I was ready to do a lot of work in that room, open more windows, chase, swing, duck, etc. The reality is the bird saw something familiar and took the quick, easy way out. When leading, for the success of the project, initiative, or organization you have to sometimes allow distractions/problems an easy way out so you can continue to move forward.

6. Experience creates an expert. Now I know, and as G.I. Joe always said, “Knowing is half the battle.” With the life accomplishment of getting the bird out, now I feel like an expert and can get the next bird out in record time. I can write a how-to book, go on the talk show circuit, and maybe even start my own DiscoveryHD show, the Bird Whisperer.