Leadership Lessons From a Quiet Hour in the Garden

This weekend, over half a million people took part in the Big Garden Birdwatch.

One hour. One garden. A few birds.

On its own, one person’s list doesn’t mean much.

Put them together, and suddenly you can see national trends - what’s declining, what’s shifting, what’s quietly disappearing.

And the lesson is…...it has similarities to how organisations work

One late rent payment.

One awkward customer email.

One offhand comment from someone junior that never quite makes the meeting notes.

Individually, they’re easy to dismiss.

Aggregated, they’re telling you something important.

The question isn’t whether we have the data.

It’s whether we’ve created the conditions for people to report what they’re really seeing - not what they think leadership wants to hear.

And there’s something else in it too.

Birdwatching is basically an hour of slowed-down attention. Feels like a useful reminder that better judgement doesn’t always come from moving faster, sometimes it comes from noticing more.