Early last year, I visited the M.C. Escher exhibit in Melbourne and had my mind blown by the mind-bending perspective pieces on display.
Perspective is a funny old thing - the same 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 the non-urgent (but often more important) stuff to the periphery.
In Thinking Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman coined the acronym W.Y.S.I.A.T.I – What You See Is All There Is. We have a tendency to form quick judgements, based on the information we have available to us, and our brain doesn’t do a great job of sorting out the quality of that information. It just gets busy building a good story about it.
For low-consequence decisions, that’s OK. It’s easy, it’s comfortable, and fast.
On the big issues, though, that kind of thinking is not enough. The future of work, climate change, social issues, economic shifts… these things need more than a quick judgement.
If we don’t take time to understand the information - and each other – we lose 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 are spending 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.
It's incredible what a bit of distance and perspective can do to change the way we decide what really matters.
When in doubt, zoom out.