Last week I published a series of posts featuring a Barred Owl along with a theme on Live Golden, highlighting the challenge of incorporating the Golden Rule into our daily lives.
You may be wondering why I chose that specific imagery. The answer is two-fold.
1️⃣ I recently took a leadership training course through Scouting America, where I was assigned to the Owl Patrol — so there’s some sentimental value there.
2️⃣ A few years ago, we found an injured barred owl in our backyard. Despite it being very inconvenient, we carefully collected it and drove two hours (one way!) to a bird rescue facility in Livingston Parish, then made the two-hour drive back. Probably one of the “kindest” things I’ve ever done 😂. (I was genuinely worried we’d hit another owl on those dark country roads, which would’ve been the ultimate irony.)
The bird was beautiful, and it was vulnerable. That experience gave me a whole new appreciation for owls.
Those two experiences together made me want to take a closer look — to explore what owls can teach us. Maybe it’s a little hokey, but let’s get past that and jump right in.
🦉 Mr. Owl and the Sweet Center of the Problem
One of the first owls that comes to mind is Mr. Owl from the old Tootsie Roll Pop commercial.
Everyone of a certain age remembers him — and little Jimmy (I think that was his name?). Jimmy asks, “Mr. Owl, how many licks does it take to get to the Tootsie Roll center of a Tootsie Pop?”
The wise old owl responds, “Let’s find out! One… two… three… CRUNCH!”
So what lesson can we take from that?
There are often multiple, creative solutions to a problem.
Mr. Owl had a goal — to reach that sweet, chewy center. The traditional approach would take time, patience, and perseverance. But the wise owl took a different route. Some might say he cheated, but I see it as creative problem-solving: thinking differently to reach the goal.
🪶 The Wise Owl in the Workplace
In life, we’re often confronted with problems that come with predefined answers.
I see this all the time at work:
“We have to follow this process because that’s how we’ve always done it!”
Yes, the process might work. Yes, it might be tried and true. But sometimes those “tried and true” systems have evolved so slowly and piecemeal that they’ve grown tangled and redundant.
Take this example (a little silly, but familiar):
An office creates a paper form in the 1980s for time-off requests. It worked fine. Then email comes along, and now employees fill out the form by hand, scan it, email it to a supervisor — who prints it, signs it, rescans it, and sends it to HR.
No, the employee can’t just email the request.
No, the paper form can’t go away — “email might get lost.”
Corporate solution? Build new software to track signatures… but keep the paper copies because that’s policy.
The Wise Owl looks at the goal — not just the process — and asks, “What’s the simplest way to get there?”
🌳 Seeing the Forest from the Trees
How can I approach my work, my home life, and my community involvement the same way?
Instead of fixating on the process, I want to focus on the end result — the real goal.
When I know the objective, I can work backward to build the right steps to reach it — instead of getting lost in the minutiae along the way.
Maybe what I really need to learn from the owl…
is how to see the forest through the trees.
“Sometimes wisdom means finding a better way to reach the center.”
#OwlWaysLearning
Ramblings from That Guy 