Good leaders know when to squint

Go ahead... squint.... give it a try.... Now what do you see? Do you notice that your peripheral view fuzzes out and it's harder to see the fine details of whatever your looking at? Although you don't want to do this all the time, it's important that you and your team do this every once in a while.

When I was a therapist, one of my little tricks was I would take a newspaper and hold it up so close to my client's face, it would touch their nose. Then I would ask them to read it to me. While some could make out a few words, no one could ever tell me what the article really said, or was about. Sometimes we look so closely and with such hyper-focus at an issue, that we loose our big-picture perspective. That's where the squinting comes in.

Details matter, don't get me wrong (which is why you don't want to do this all the time), but it is our human nature to get so bogged down in those details that we tend to forget what were trying to accomplish in the first place.

All leaders have found themselves falling into the sticky pit of detail diversion. It always starts off well intentioned and innocent enough. A problem needs to be solved, and before long it balloons into something else entirely. Let me give you an example. Say, for instance, we set out to simplify an overly complicated form that new customers fill out. Easy right? We analyze it, break it down, and then it happens... someone says "wait... wouldn't it be great to ask this question?". Then you hear "and while we're at it we NEED to know this," and "it would be SO much harder to miss if we changed the color and ordered new paper "(which we now need another shelf for). And "it would help out the account receivable department if we could learn THIS about our new customers", and "while we have their attention..." and it goes on and on. Before we know it, the finished product is a form that is indeed harder to miss, is much more comprehensive, will solve so many other department's complaints and even MORE complicated than it was before we began!

Now all of those questions and changes may be important, and worthy of addressing, but wasn't our original intention just to simplify the darn thing? This kind of thing goes on all the time, in all kinds of workplaces. Good intentions quickly get away from us as we stray away from the goals we set out to accomplish in the first place. Not to mention, the credibility hit we take when the staff actually affected by it see the new "improved" product (and wonder if their leadership has completely lost it). So every so often, when you haven't done so in a while, take a moment and squint... because sometimes its what we don't see that matters most.