Happy Chickens Lay Eggs: Productivity Tips For Teams

In PBS’s reality show Frontier House, three families were put out in the Montana wilderness to try to prove which one was best suited to survive a Montana winter. They had to generate income, keep a farm running, and keep their families together all at the same time. One of the families, thinking they would get an edge on the others, purchased far more chickens than the others. Their plan was to produce more eggs than the other families and become the go-to local egg supplier. So they filled their coop to the edges with healthy chickens, and waited.

They did get lots of eggs, at first. But after a while production slowed a bit. Some of the hens started to get aggressive with others and cause serious injury (see ‘henpcked’). Keeping the coop clean became an untenable task, and before long some of the chickens started to show signs of illness, and a few even died. Eventually this family’s egg production fell below other’s who had half as many chickens. But how??

If these folks had done a bit of research about chicken husbandry they would have known that in order for a hen to lay healthy eggs consistently, she needs the right environment. They thrive with clean bedding, a quiet place to lay their eggs, room to forage, scratch, and take dirt baths; high roosts to safely rest on at night, and enough room to stay out of each others’ way. By cramming too many hens together they created a highly stressful environment. Instead of investing their energy into egg laying, they were constantly preoccupied with competing with each other for resources in order to simply survive.

The same general rules apply to optimizing the productivity of a team of humans. The best leaders do everything they can to create an atmosphere that is conducive to generating a healthy balance of quality and quantity work. This isn’t about foosball machines and free snacks, though these things can absolutely contribute to a healthy work environment. It’s about keeping your individual team members in their strengths and supporting them in their weaknesses, monitoring workloads so people are adequately stimulated but not overwhelmed, and continuous communication so expectations are consistently managed.

So the next time you’re looking to ramp up productivity, before you add people or add work to the people you have, first make sure you’ve created the most fertile ground for that work to be done. Happy chickens lay more eggs!