Seeing the Whole: The Most Important Leadership Trait of Our Times

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What if President George W Bush were more aware of the prejudices at play within his national security team? What if he had been more conscious of the potential unintended consequences of the invasion of Iraq? What if he had given more credence to the possibility of the intelligence being wrong? If the President had endeavored to see the whole, we may have just saved thousands of American lives and more than $2 trillion. [1]

If Siebel Systems, the pioneer of CRM software, had attempted to see the whole, it may have foreseen the transformation of computing into a utility, and the inevitable large-scale transition from on-premise to cloud based application software. [2]

If Blockbuster had sought to see the whole, it may have understood the futility of over-charging customers in late fees, the promise of broadband, and the inexorable shift to video streaming as a service.

And then think of the financial crisis of 2008, our ultra-polarized and broken political institutions, the doping confessions of once iconic sportspersons like Lance Armstrong and Maria Sharapova and the constant drumroll of scandals.

They all stand testimony to the inability of many of our leaders — across business, politics, sports and government — to see the whole.

But, what is this business of seeing the whole?

When you seek to understand the whole — not just some fragments — you try to look past short-term or tactical questions and try to place the issue in a larger context linking past, present and future. And in a way that is deeply connected to the strategic outcomes that stakeholders care about in the long term.

The person who sees the whole views the present as a reflection of the historical events of the past, and sees the future as a field of possibilities, each with a different probability of coming to fruition.

Seeing the whole is somewhat related to systematic thinking but is more than that. It combines fact with empathy, data with gut, and is as much about intuition as about understanding how individual parts work with each other.

Taken in totality, the whole illuminates, enlightens and informs more than anything else. Notwithstanding the known unknowns and the unknown unknowns, the whole is the truest picture of reality as can be known at a point in time.

But very few of us see the whole as it is. We only see fragments distorted through our own colored lens, not to talk of the projections that exist only in our imagination. What we see is of course dwarfed by what we do not see, which often turns out to make all the difference.

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Why Do We Not See The Whole?

Because we think we are right too often and get too attached to our points of view.

Because we get too lazy to do the painstaking work of thinking through all aspects of an issue to know what we do not know and where the blind spots may lie.

Because we close ourselves to opposing points of view and become less open to those who disagree with us.

Because we value near-term gratifications and short-term measures of perceived progress more than taking tough decisions that are more likely to be right, but can be validated only by the passage of time.

Because we get so absorbed in our bubbles that we fail to notice what is changing around us.

Because we often lack the empathy to see through other people’s eyes and stand in their shoes.

Learning to seek to see the whole is not a nice to have.

It is a fundamental pre-requisite for any job where you make profound decisions that touch lives. Like being a Parent, Spouse, Entrepreneur, CEO, or Politician. Or a leader in just about any walk of life.

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How Do We Learn To Seek To See The Whole?

There are five broad considerations.

1. Know The Job To be Done

It seems weird to say leaders may not know the problems they are trying to solve, but this is truer than we care to admit.

Leaders often conflate the job to be done with executing the solution on hand, or misbelieve that the current solution is the best approach to get the job done without sufficiently evaluating potential alternative paths. Or they tend to under-estimate how new technologies may have dramatically changed the nature of the job to be done.

For President Bush, the job to be done was to keep America safe from rogue states and non-state actors who posed a direct threat, and take care to not put our armed forces in harm’s way, unless when absolutely necessary. Did the Iraq decision meet this burden of proof?

For Blockbuster, the customer job to be done was to enjoy movies with maximal convenience, reasonable costs and minimal friction. Their demise was sown by a management that was unwilling to let go of the current model, and unable to recognize how the broadband internet could disrupt their business.

For Siebel Systems’ customers, the job to be done was the ability to sell, service and market more effectively, and in a way that maximized their return on investment while aligning cash-out with value realized. New cloud based models changed the nature of this “job to be done” faster and deeper than Siebel realized at that time.

To know our customers’ jobs to be done, and by extension ours, we need to revert to first principles of who we serve, why and to what end, with clear eyes, and with a beginner’s mind.

2. Be Curious

“The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing.” ― Albert Einstein

Curiosity is the ultimate kindler of the mind.

A leader needs to constantly ask questions. Of everything, but especially of those not in alignment with the jobs that need to get done.

The curious leader is much more likely to see the whole, and understand the need to constantly question and validate both explicit and hidden assumptions.

3. Stay Humble

The Ego is the ever-present villain in the human drama. It can bring a veil down on awareness, mislead you into a state of pride or complacence and drive wrong decisions.

For a leader, humility is not some type of a moral check box. It is instead a state of clarity in which the leader is in a permanent mode of seeking the truth, and ensuring that the right decisions are made every day to get the jobs done in the most effective way.

4. Understand Biases

A leader needs to be cognizant of his own biases and that of his team members.

To see the whole, we need to come into awareness of the cobwebs of our own ignorance and prejudices.

When we see something for what it is, than what we wish it to be, we are on a much stronger footing.

5. Reconsider Constantly

Facts change. Data changes.

The whole looks different every day with new information.

Do not harden your position so much that you fail to consider new evidence.

While you should never compromise on values, everything else has to be based on data, including the cost of change and the cost of staying on course.

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The ability to see the whole may be the most valuable leadership attribute of our challenging and uncertain times.

Leaders who see the whole do not fall for glitz and glamour. They do what is right for the long term. They do what is most appropriate and in line with core values and first principles.

Leaders who see the whole are more likely to see around the bend, to predict what is changing and what may be coming down the pike.

Leaders who see the whole are more likely to prioritize the collective good over personal ego and build an organization with clarity of purpose.

Leaders who see the whole can hold multiple stories in their heads and deal with apparent contradictions without losing sense of what needs to be accomplished and the data that is still missing.

Leaders who see the whole approach setbacks with humility and as an opportunity for learning.

Seeing the whole is not some management trick that can be learnt at business school. It is a character trait that emerges from the cauldron of real-life experiences, from the very core of who you are, and shaped by the sober realization that the whole is bigger and greater than any one fragment and yet not complete without every fragment playing its part.

In a messy, complex world that often misinterprets noise for signal, and falls for style over substance, let us elect, recruit, support and celebrate the leaders with the ability to see the whole.

Notes:

[1] Easy to second-guess in hindsight, but research over the last decade in both the UK and US conclude definitively that the decision to invade Iraq was based on flawed evidence, has cost over $2+ trillion and unleashed ISIS.

[2] I worked for Siebel Systems from 1999–2005. Siebel sold to Oracle for ~ $10B in 2006, but most believe that the company missed the transition to the cloud, and massively under-achieved its true potential.