In last week’s blog post we discussed how critical it is for leaders to notice the things that are going on in their corporations in order to act proactively and resolve issues before they become serious. A youtube video also helped us to understand and explore the phenomenon of inattentional blindness, and its role in keeping many good leaders from noticing more.
The Rule of WYSINATI
Successful leadership requires vigilance. Leaders often fail to notice when:
- They are obsess with other issues or crises,
- they are motivated not to notice, or
- other people work hard to prevent them from noticing.
Responsible leaders notice when things are going seriously wrong in their organizations. Failure to do so is unacceptable. We must ask the right questions to anticipate avertable catastrophes.
Unfortunately, leaders often act as though “what you see is all there is”, according to Daniel Kahneman, a 2002 Nobel Prize Winner. They neglect to identify and obtain the additional information they need. Complacency lulls them into acting on only the most basic data provided to them.
In The Power of Noticing: What the Best Leaders See, Max Bazerman coins the term WYSINATI: What You See Is Not All There Is. With forethought and knowledge, we can learn to identify when and how to obtain missing information.
Unintentional Blindness
While it is always easy to spot problems in hindsight, we usually don’t recognize them in our own organizations. While we may see ourselves as scrupulous and well-intentioned, we’re usually averse to noticing our own potential for questionable ethics. This can lead us to make improper and even immoral decisions.
When a situation doesn’t seem quite right, we cannot afford to ignore data that flies in the face of commonly accepted values. This is not the time to accept insufficient evidence, refuse to raise questions, be unwilling to badger people, or avoid upsetting the apple cart.
Silence and complacency promote corruption. Nonetheless, we tend to wait. We hope we’re not being overly sensitive or alarmist. We trust that others will notice and speak up for us.
Faulty Attribution
The best leaders are skilled at detecting deception, including patterns of indirect action and errors of omission. They also have a noticing mindset. They detect slow, gradual changes that may indicate the start of a slippery slope. They’re aware of overconfidence traps, optimism biases, and positive illusions.
The human brain is fallible. It can lead us to make cause-and0effect attribution errors. Most crises can be attributed to both internal and external causes, but to which are you more likely to pay attention?
Most of us are prone to a fundamental attribution bias: when we think of our successes, we tend to come up with internal attributions and focus on what we did right. By contrast, when we think of our failures, we tend to come up with external attributions. We blame others, or the context, the economy and/or circumstances beyond our control. This can lead to dire consequences in decision-making and strategic planning.
How to Develop Better Noticing Skills
Leaders often fail to notice when their systems encourage misaligned goals. When we incentivize the wrong achievements, we often experience ineffective outcomes (for example, rewarding book sales instead of actual profits).
Encourage employees to notice the gaps between the right actions and right results. Work teams are often in a better position to spot discrepancies, yet they may be reticent to speak up.
Develop your abilities to:
- Pay attention to what didn’t happen,
- Acknowledge self-interest,
- Invent the third choice, and
- Realize that what you see is not all there is (WYSINATI).
I hope this two part blog post has helped you to discover any areas in your life where you may fall prey to inattentional blindness, and how to begin noticing more. As always, I would love to hear from you. I can be reached here or on LinkedIn.
