I was listening to a sermon a few weeks ago that reminded me of the principle of broken windows that Malcolm Gladwell talks about in The Tipping Point.

The principle works like this.  In a neighborhood filled with crime, you’ll see a lot of broken windows.  Studies have shown that when the windows are fixed, crime goes down.  Gladwell talks about New York City, when a new administrator took over the subway system.  Instead of going after violent criminals, he stopped turnstyle jumpers.  It turns out…these people were committing many of the crimes.

In other words, there are small, visible things that, once fixed, can lead to success in a much larger area.  As leaders, we often have to work on the systems.  But at other times, we have to fix the very visible and very broken window.  This symbolic gesture actually helps address the root problem.

This is when we began the long process of reinventing KidVenture, we started with the check in station.  We created a new theme and a new motif.  Behind the scenes, we’re working on software upgrades so we can integrate check in data with our main database.  But nobody sees (or cares about) that.  The new check in area looks cool, and communicates something.

Work on the behind the scenes stuff; but don’t forget to fix those broken windows.