If you recall, the outcome of the big chicken massacre was a traumatized rooster (Oden) and an unscathed hen (we named her Sally the Survivor). The end result of one hen and a feisty rooster is an oversexed hen.  I needed to solve my immediate problem: finding more hens.  Since I have Icelandic chickens, breeding with other types of chickens isn’t an option.  So, I did what everyone does when faced with a problem these days and turned to social media.  In my Icelandic Chicken Mama Facebook group, I asked if anyone had any hens I could buy in my local area.  Fortunately, there was one woman who agreed to sell me some of her hens though the price was a bit steep.  We did the exchange in the parking lot of Buy Buy Baby in Clackamas, Oregon.
 
I drove them home and planned on waiting until after dark to introduce the hens to their new home and family, but then changed my mind and decided to give them a few hours to acclimate prior to heading to bed for the evening.  Well, that was quite an experience.  Oden, the rooster, was overwhelmed with all his new options, and Sally was less than pleased to have to share Oden’s attention.  I have a video of this introduction if you are looking for a little chicken entertainment.  
 
Now, I wasn’t excited about paying what I paid for my hens, but the reality was that I needed to solve my short-term issue in order to make sure Sally survived.  I considered my options – purchasing chicks, purchasing eggs or paying an arm and a leg for hens.  I picked the best of the less than ideal options and moved toward implementation.  
 
I’m sure there are many of us who haven’t liked our options over the past 16 months.  Wearing a mask, social distancing, not seeing friends, not traveling, cooking all meals at home, etc.  But one thing I’ve learned as an adult is we often have to make hard decisions based on the current situation we are facing.  
 
When I’m implementing EOS with a client, I work to help them get better in three areas: Vision, Traction and Healthy.  Vision means that everyone is clear on where the organization is going and how it will get there.  Traction means no matter where you look in the organization, you see people executing on that vision with discipline and accountability. Healthy means transforming the leadership team into a cohesive, fun-loving group of people who genuinely like working together.  
 
Guess which one is the hardest to do? Yep – transforming the leadership team into a cohesive group of people who are willing to be open and honest with one another.  Conflict is difficult for most people, and as a result, they avoid it.  The sad reality is that avoiding it doesn’t make it go away. In fact, in many ways, it festers and ends up causing more issues than you can imagine.  Engaging in a lively debate is critical to working through the issues facing an organization.  If your leadership team can’t engage in those conversations, the decisions that are being made may be taking you farther from what you are trying to achieve, not closer. 
 
If you sense that your team is not making the hard decisions because they are avoiding conflict, you could be heading for trouble.  If you are ready to take the bold steps to work through those issues but you aren’t sure where to start, I can help you.  Making the difficult decisions now will help position the organization for growth in the future.  Are you ready for a new future?  Email me now and we can start working on achieving it today.  

Many of you have asked who killed my chickens.  If you haven’t been following my ongoing chicken mama saga, you can find my last article here.  But, just to quickly summarize, something killed six of my eight chickens, leaving a traumatized rooster without tail feathers and an unscathed hen.  
 
My husband and I have spent days pondering the demise of our chickens.  To answer the question succinctly, we aren’t exactly sure. But there are two clues that shed some light on the answer.
 
First, one of the chickens was found in our backyard.  Our chicken coop is in the front field and requires either walking down the driveway or strolling through the woods to get to the coop.  Even back in our short-lived, free-range chicken days, no chicken ever wandered up towards the house.  They ran (or flew) for cover in the trees and away from our dogs.  So, something brought this chicken to our backyard.
 
The second clue takes a little to set up, so bear with me.  As you may recall, we have a chicken coop enclosed within a 10×10 run with a gate.  At the request of our chickens, we expanded this run to include a 20×30 play area that has poultry fencing on the sides and is covered with bird netting.  This play area isn’t designed to keep them safe at night, but during the day it does keep them contained, and the netting keeps winged predators out while preventing the chickens from “flying the coop.”  Our chicken coop has an automatic door opener, which protects them at night, and when we closed the run gate in the evening, the chickens were also predator-safe.  After the chicken massacre, we added chicken coop fencing around the play area and staked it down.  And we committed to closing the run gate every night to protect them even more.
 
In honor of my husband’s birthday, I dressed the dogs in their birthday bandanas from Bailey’s Bandanas. The morning after his birthday, JacX (the puppy) returned to the house after “doing her business” without her bandana.  That morning, as I walked up to let the chickens out, I was lamenting that I would have to order another bandana as the dogs look so cute with them on.  When I arrived at the chicken coop, I found the bandana.  Smack in the middle of the play structure.  You know: the one surrounded by chicken coop fencing.
 
Yep, our “bird dog” used her nose and paws to pry up the stakes, lift the fencing and enter the play structure.  Fortunately, the chickens were locked up in the run and she couldn’t get to them.
 
As I reflect on why JacX would do that, I think she might have started taking “liberties” with her title of bird dog.  Instead of thinking of herself as a dog that retrieves the birds her dad shoots, she started to think of herself as a dog who retrieves all birds, regardless of whether her dad shot them.  
 
And while I’m not happy with her at all, I think that in some ways we can all relate to her.  How many of us have taken ‘liberties” with our titles or our responsibilities over the past year?  Think about it – how many of us have transitioned to less formal business attire while working at home (or at least from the waist down)?  Or how many of us have found out that without all the idle chit-chat, we can actually get all our work done 15-20% faster, thus allowing us to shrink our work week?  Or perhaps we have “shirked” those responsibilities that we really don’t like doing or never found any value in completing?
 
As we move into a post-pandemic life, most businesses will start having employees return to work in the office full-time.  This will definitely be a period of adjustment.  I’d like to propose the following three suggestions on how to preserve the benefits of the past year while ensuring that the company is poised to grow and thrive in this new economy.  

1. Communicate.  Don’t assume your employees know what you have been thinking and planning for the past year.  As we teach in EOS, in order for an employee to hear you for the first time, they need to hear it seven times.  So, get clear on your vision and your path to achieving that vision and then start communicating.  If you feel like you are overcommunicating, or you’re getting tired of repeating yourself, pat yourself on the back and keep on communicating.
2. Be clear on everyone’s responsibilities. A year is a long time to firmly establish habits, good or bad.  So, as you move towards “re-entry” make sure that everyone is clear on what is expected of them.  One EOS tool that I like to use is the 5-5-5.  This tool can be used to reinforce core values, describe the employee role in the organization and define their quarterly “rocks” (business priorities). 
3. Be human.  One of the benefits of the past year is the melding together of our personal and professional lives.  We have learned how to work from home and balance remote learning for our kids, how to manage barking dogs during Zoom meetings and how to support each other during periods of tremendous stress.  My hope is that we maintain that same level of care and concern in our post-pandemic lives. 

If you find that you or your workforce isn’t ready to navigate the new realities, please reach out to me.  I can provide you some tools and techniques that will make this adjustment much easier for all parties involved.  And, perhaps, we can learn how to leverage some of those “liberties” into a more fulfilling life.

As my husband and I started talking about getting chickens, we created our vision: free range chickens that laid lots of eggs.  

As you know, the first round of chickens were free range but they stopped laying eggs in our coop.  Our second round has been confined to our run and the quantity of eggs has slowly been increasing.  But, the free range part isn’t going so well.  We have two issues, first our dog JacX who believes her job is to catch the chickens and bring them to my husband (Mike is working on addressing this issue with the dog trainer).  

But, our other issue is Oden, the rooster. The reason we have a rooster is twofold: first, roosters will protect the hens, and second, having a rooster allows me to continue the bloodline without purchasing additional chicks.

Oden is very good at protecting his hens. But about a month ago, my husband went to put them in for the night, and Oden wasn’t quite ready to turn in. My husband gave him a gentle nudge toward the coop, which Oden didn’t appreciate. His response was to flog my husband. While my husband didn’t dwell on the incident, Oden apparently isn’t over it yet. He now likes to strut up to me or my husband to challenge us. Fortunately, Oden has learned the word “No.” But it has definitely reduced the fun in caring for the chickens. In fact, I can’t be in the coop when he is walking around, as he will come up and try to challenge me (he hasn’t tried to flog me yet). 

Based on our Chicken Values, I’ve been wondering if we have a Right Seat, Wrong Chicken problem.

The phrase “Right Person, Right Seat” comes from Jim Collins’ 2001 bestseller Good to Great. The “Right Person” is someone who shares your organization’s core values. The “Right Seat” means that person is using the skills and talents they were born with. When implementing EOS, I teach my clients that in order to achieve their vision, they need 100% of the individuals in their organization to be “Right People, Right Seat.” If you don’t have that, the organization’s performance will suffer. Allow me to explain. 

Let’s say your situation is Right Person, Wrong Seat. You have someone who shares your company’s core values. They fit your culture like a glove, but they aren’t doing a job that is in line with their skills and abilities. Typically, management makes excuses for the person by saying things like, ”He has been here since the beginning,” or “I really want her to finish her career with us.” So, you either tolerate underperformance or begin to create workarounds to ensure the organization still meets its goals while keeping that person in his/her seat. That results in inefficiency, chaos and reduced performance. 

The other challenge you may face is Wrong Person, Right Seat. This is someone who is really good at the job but doesn’t demonstrate the organization’s core values. I’ve witnessed this with a really strong salesperson who will win at all costs, even if it means sacrificing the company’s core values. It might also happen when you have a very knowledgeable technical person in a key role, or possessing a unique understanding of the product or service being provided. Organizations often feel they can’t possibly let that person go, because they will lose their competitive edge, and if that employee were then hired by a competitor, the company’s secrets could be shared. But I have seen first-hand that letting a Wrong Person go actually liberates other individuals in the organization to step up and fill the void. And oftentimes, after the person is gone, the leadership team will start to hear stories about how this person was eroding the culture and the company’s reputation.

If you sense that someone in your organization is either the wrong person in the right seat, or the right person in the wrong seat, I challenge you to do something about it. Achieving your vision requires that you address those issues within the organization. If you aren’t sure what to do or how to approach this issue, I can help you get clarity on how best to address it for the greater good of your organization.

Oh, and did I mention that one of my 18 week old chickens is a rooster…

The week before Christmas I filled my chicken coop with hens and one rooster.  I felt pretty good about myself as I was finally on my way to achieving my goal of having free-range eggs on a daily basis.

The following afternoon, I went up to visit the chickens and noticed that one hen was outside the run.  Seeing the rest of the chickens in the run, I made the assumption that our long lost “Caramel Corn” (from the previous batch of hens) had been called in by our rooster.

Both my husband and I were very excited.  And so was our bird dog, JacX.

JacX began chasing the chicken as we discussed how to get her into the coop.  Our attention wasn’t on the dog or the chicken, as we knew Caramel Corn could fly.  Well, apparently, she couldn’t fly as well as we thought. JacX cornered her and killed her.

I was so distraught.  How could this chicken live on her own for the past five months and then get caught by JacX in just a few minutes?  I even think JacX felt bad as well.  It was a sad ending to the “A Chicken’s Way Home” movie.

The next morning, I got the call from my husband: Caramel Corn was up in the front field with our neighbor’s horses and goats.  Yes, Caramel Corn lives again!

So, where had this other chicken come from?  I couldn’t say for sure, but I assumed it was a neighbor’s chicken.  Mostly, I was happy that Caramel Corn was going to live another day.

All was fine until I went up a few days later to clean the coop.  To my dismay, I realized that I was missing a hen.  I searched high and low, but she was gone.

And now I knew where that free-range hen came from.  I still don’t know how she got out, but she did.  So, yes, I am down one chicken.  And, again, I’m feeling really bad about my chicken mama skills.

Not keeping score really hurt me. If I had been keeping count, I would have known that I had lost a chicken and could have taken steps to address the problem before the instincts of our hunting dog took over.

Not keeping track of the leading indicators in your business can also have drastic consequences.  How many times could you have avoided a problem in your business if you had taken steps earlier? That includes things such as declines in revenue, safety issues or losing key personnel who are not feeling appreciated or fulfilled.

The reality is that no matter what plan you set for your business, issues will come up.  Small issues left unattended can grow into large issues.  If you aren’t tracking your business’s key metrics, or leading indicators, you could find yourself reacting too late, after an issue has impacted business performance.

However, by reviewing your leading indicators on a weekly basis, you will be able to see data and trends that let you know you need to take action.

Don’t have a scorecard?  No problem: follow these three steps to develop one.

1. Identify key metrics for each of your departments.

2. Monitor those metrics every week during your leadership team meetings.

3. Take steps once you see a metric trending off track.

To make this even easier, you can request a copy of the scorecard I created that will automatically create graphs for your key metrics.

Now is the time to get yourself and your team aligned on the key metrics that will ensure you launch 2021 on the right foot because I don’t want you to experience anything like the sad ending of “A Chicken’s Way Home.”

P.S. Starting your year with a clear vision and plan to achieve that vision will improve your chances of achieving your goals by 300%.  A scorecard makes sure you are staying on track.