A Chicken's Eye View

I asked my granddaughter, who is visiting from Iowa, to help me find the hole in the chicken coop they were using to escape. It took her 10 seconds to find something I had been looking for, for over a month. The key was her perspective. Looking upward from the viewpoint of the chickens, she spotted something I could not see by looking downward. There was a slight gap in the fence where two pieces overlapped. Not only did she solve the riddle, but she also gained ownership by helping to fix the hole. She was so proud of herself that she gathered the eggs and diligently watched over "her coop."

Soon after I joined PepsiCo, they decided to spin off the operational and labor-intensive bottling part of their business. The CEO and CHRO of the new company did something unique. Instead of gathering the Sr. leadership to brainstorm a new mission statement, they traveled around the country meeting with frontline employees. A truck driver in one of these meetings said, "Why do we have to make things so complicated? We Sell Soda." That became the mission statement along with four powerful "Rules of the Road" operating principles. I was responsible for rolling this statement out to the locations I supported. When the blue-collar workers heard that the mission statement didn't come from the executive boardroom but from one of their own on the shop floor, their engagement and sense of ownership increased dramatically.

Most leaders think the bird's eye perspective of an eagle soaring high above is needed to recognize and solve critical problems, but often, it is the perspective of the chicken on the ground doing the actual work that provides the clearest and most executable solutions.