When in doubt, zoom out

Early last year, I visited the M.C. Escher exhibit in Melbourne and was blown away by some of the mind-bending perspective pieces on display.

Perspective is a funny old thing - the things that are huge when they're right in front of us seem to get smaller when they're further away. 

It's not just our eyes that do this - our attention does, too. When we deal with urgent, operational issues, our minds shift less imminent ideas and events to the periphery. 

Daniel Kahneman discusses this in his work Thinking Fast and Slow, coining the acronym W.Y.S.I.A.T.I—What You See Is All There Is. Kahneman is talking about our tendency to form quick judgements based on the information we have available to us. Our brain doesn’t do a great job of sorting out the quality of that information either—it just gets busy building a good story about it.

For low-consequence decisions, that’s OK. It’s easy, it’s comfortable, and it’s fast.

On the big issues, though, that kind of thinking is not enough. The future of work, climate change, social issues, and economic shifts… these things need more than a quick judgment. 

If we don’t take time to understand the information—and each other—we will miss an opportunity to think differently or achieve meaningful perspective.

“You cannot help dealing with the limited information you have as if it were all there is to know. You build the best possible story from the information available to you, and if it is a good story, you believe it. 

Paradoxically, it is easier to construct a coherent story when you know little, when there are fewer pieces to fit into the puzzle. Our comforting conviction that the world makes sense rests on a secure foundation: our almost unlimited ability to ignore our ignorance.”

― Daniel Kahneman, Thinking Fast and Slow

Some senior leaders spend far too much time stuck in the weeds. When we don’t carve out that space and time (ironically, because we don’t have enough time….), we pay for it later with slow, ineffective long-term planning.

More importantly, it’s extremely hard to be on the same page as the people around us, when we don’t have proper conversations – and those are hard to have when you’re down on the ground.

It's incredible what a bit of distance and perspective can do to change the way we decide what matters. 

When in doubt, zoom out.