My brother was born on my fourth birthday. Along with two older sisters, we grew up in rural Ohio.
A truth of growing up on a farm: There is always a problem to solve. Always.
One problem was the sheer number of pigeons roosting in the rafters of our large 19th-century bank barn. Pigeons are a menace in many ways, not least because of the copious amount of bird poo that lands on the hay mow. Contaminated hay isn’t worth much, so the top layer always had to be discarded.
When my brother was about eight, my father bought him a BB gun. He told him he’d pay my brother a quarter for every pigeon he shot and killed.
A month later, my father owed my brother 75 cents, and he spent about three hundred dollars replacing the windows in the barn.
He took my brother’s BB gun and pulled back on the deal. “You’ve got terrible aim, son,” my father said. “You’re not a sure enough shot yet.”
My brother didn’t argue. The idea was abandoned.
But years later, recounting this story, a new little detail emerged. “It’s not that I had terrible aim, Dad,” my brother confessed. “I just couldn’t bear to kill them.”
My father laughed out loud. “Well,” he said. “That’s what I get for trying a quick fix without thinking it through. It was bad math all around.”
The Lesson
Sometimes we have a good idea—one that seems reasonable and effective—and we put a plan in place. But then we watch it go very, very poorly. Upon reflection, we realize we hadn't considered the "solution" in its entirety.
As principals, this is easy to do. I’ve done it. I see a problem and throw a solution at it— an attendance incentive, a new disciplinary rule, a last-minute software fix, an adjusted spreadsheet, a new approach.
But we often forget two things:
There are windows. What fragile things (like teacher morale, student trust, school culture, efficiency practices) are sitting right behind the problem we’re trying to solve?
There has to be heart. Does our team actually believe in the goal? What happens if they don’t buy into the why?
Before you launch that next "great idea," take a second to look past the pigeon and ask yourself two things:
Is the solution more expensive (literally or figuratively) than the problem?
What will you do if your team doesn’t buy into the solution?
Sometimes, the best way to save the windows is to rethink the tool you're using. Or learn to live with it.
That’s what my father did.
He replaced the windows.
He let the pigeons be, coming to terms with a financial loss on soiled hay.
And he let my brother be the kind of kid who didn’t want to kill pigeons.
That’s all for this week. I hope you’re all having an amazing spring so far!
Jen
P.S. My brother is still the same. He lives in an area where most everyone hunts— but ot him. “It’s when they don’t even see it coming,” he says. “I just can’t.”