You better build a birdhouse

D. Hudson

Let's say you are a business leader who sometimes feels the weight of responsibility to not only keep up with the work but to somehow make it better. You know you should be building for the future, delighting your customers, and helping your employees realize their potential. You often have really good ideas, but you don't seem to have time to get them moving.

This time you decide to do something about it. You're going to shake things up. It's time for change, and you're a change agent!

I've been there, and here are some of the many things I've tried in the quest for a breakthrough:

• Read a popular business book on the subject

• Attend a business conference

• Take a structured course

• Research the topic on my own

• Hire an expert consultant

• Ask the board of directors

• Have a leadership team off site meeting

• Work with an executive coach

Each of these approaches has its costs and benefits. I might evaluate these in a later post, but for now, I want to talk about, "How can we tell an improvement approach is helping us?" If you try one of these attempts, what needs to happen for you to call it a success?

I'm going to try an analogy here to see if it helps.

Let's suppose you have a beautiful backyard in a beautiful neighbourhood. There are many songbirds in your neighbourhood, but they don't spend much time in your yard. Your daughter really wants to see and hear the beautiful birds. She comes home from school one day, excited because she learned that robins will nest in a birdhouse if it is designed with their needs in mind. You don't know much about carpentry, but you and your daughter are excited about the possibilities. You come up with a few ideas about how you could get started:

• Buy a book with plans

• Take a course at a local building store

• Watch YouTube videos

• Buy a kit at a hobby store

• Ask a carpenter friend for help

Since we're working in second person here, you get to decide which route you'll take. You probably could do any of these, but no matter what you choose, you better build a birdhouse!

If you don't build a birdhouse, your daughter will not be impressed with progress reports like these:

• "I read a really good book on birdhouses, and it even has pictures."

• "The consultants have provided designs for 25 different birds, only four of which are found in this climate."

• "We had some solid meetings on this and I feel we're making progress."

• "I started watching birdhouse videos, got distracted, clicked a few links, then I ordered plans for a tiny home, and I now have my eye on a lake lot in Scotland."

If you want robins to nest in your yard, you need to build a "robin nesting shelf" style of birdhouse. Robins will not nest in unopened kits, parts lists, plans or focus groups. They need a birdhouse.

Going back to your leadership aspirations, if you want to make a fundamental change in your organization, make sure you build a birdhouse. Make sure you focus on tangible progress, not on making sure your efforts are visible.

In business, "building your birdhouse" takes three steps.

1. Focus on the system that creates value in your organization.

2. Understand what is limiting the system's ability to produce even more value.

3. Use the insights from the first two steps to actually change how the organization creates value so that you have a better, more consistent flow of value.

Being involved with any conference, course, consultant, or coach that does not intentionally and demonstrably increase the flow of value is like watching DIY videos and ordering kits without ever building a birdhouse.

You better build a birdhouse.