Identify the Blind Spots that Hold Your Business Back
Book review: Wilful Blindness by Margaret Heffernan
This is not a comfortable read, but it is a profoundly worthwhile one. It’s also difficult to categorise: it’s not a business book, exactly, but it speaks so powerfully to the way in which we structure and run our organisations that it should be essential reading for every CEO, and indeed manager.
Heffernan sets out one core idea in this book — the fact that there are things we choose not to see, knowledge we could and should have but deliberately elect NOT to have because to know would be too uncomfortable or demanding — and explores it in forensic detail across multiple arenas. She brings in psychology and neurology alongside political, environmental and business case studies.
She also celebrates those who, at massive personal inconvenience, choose to see and to force others to see: the ‘Cassandras’ and whistle-blowers who are so often reviled and resisted but whom we desperately need. If you have a sense that something is wrong, and you cannot understand why no one else seems to care or even notice, you’ll find a deeper understanding of what’s going on and encouragement to take action here.
Choosing to see takes real moral courage and cognitive effort, and it goes against so much of our most fundamental neurology. For most of us the overriding imperative is to fit in, to stay in the safety of the herd: ‘Under social pressure, most of us would simply rather be wrong than alone.’
Given that we are wired to be wilfully blind, and that every commercial imperative reinforces that tendency, no company can rely on goodwill, good management and common sense to protect it from becoming the subject of the latest financial, health and safety or supply chain scandal.
This puts a difficult obligation on leaders: how can we balance the benefit of the herd, the sense of belonging and the focus on productivity, with the need to protect those who have things to say that will bring disruption and discomfort? One important aspect is diversity:
‘That’s why diversity matters so much: not (as is still commonly assumed) in the interests of political correctness, but in the interest of vigorous debate and divergent thinking… when the people around your table come from different places — mentally, socially, intellectually — they are more likely to ask the questions which reveal something previously invisible.’
Heffernan’s writing is superb — engaging and incisive, a perfect balance of storytelling and hard-edged research. She is also master of the brisk aside: apropos of the cognitive impact of attentional load on attentional capacity she notes that:
‘The idea that multitasking is women’s unique contribution to the workplace is really nothing more than an excuse for getting the underpaid to overwork.’
Given that the issue is so intractable, it’s perhaps no surprise that Heffernan offers no easy solution — but her passionate call to awareness is perhaps the best answer. Really, all leaders need to do is to be willing to be aware and, once aware, take action. Once you make space for the conversation, the hidden things will emerge:
‘When I ask participants to describe the areas in which they think they or their organisations might be wilfully blind, it takes only minutes for the conversation to begin. Everyone knows. Everyone always knows. Removing the impediments to those dialogues is an essential first step.’
Wilful Blindness is available from Blackwell’s here.
Alison Jones (@bookstothesky) is a publishing partner for businesses and organizations with something to say. Formerly Director of Innovation Strategy with Palgrave Macmillan, she hosts The Extraordinary Business Book Clubpodcast, regularly speaks and blogs on publishing, business and writing, sits on the board of the IPG, and is the author of This Book Means Business (2018).
