Letter 011 - "I need for you to see the fucking bigger picture"

Find energy in seeing the bigger picture -- the ecosystem of "things" happening around you

“I need for you to see the fucking bigger picture” - Said by a former client of mine, speaking to one of her direct reports, after the fourth hour of a session where about ten of us were trying to nail down a turnaround strategy for an about-to-fail business unit.

I was pretty early in my career when that moment happened, and I remember feeling fully inadequate to help this executive when we spoke after the meeting. He was exasperated. I wanted to help him, but I just didn’t know how to at that point (I was also afraid to speak too much while he was still so exhausted and tender from the pressure he had just dealt with).

In that moment, I thought back to a concept I had learned from one of my mentors about “leveling up” your point of view. Getting to a higher altitude. Here’s an example of how “leveling up” works, written as a progression of events:

• Event 1: We have a sales problem. We can’t convert our sales

• Event 2: The problem is that our sales people aren’t trained to effectively sell the product

• Event 3: You realize that your sales force is actually well trained, capable, and enabled.

• Event 4: “Crap, I’m stuck”

• This is when you level up

• Event 5: Let’s level up our thinking. Instead of thinking about the team, let’s think about the department in which this team seats. And then let’s think about the company in which the department sits. And then let’s think about the segment in which the company sits. And then let’s think about the overall market in which the company sits, and then let’s think about the broader economy and macro trends that might be impacting all of the factors below

  • At each level, you’re tracking what’s happening, what people are striving for, the challenges they’re facing, and also considering how they behave / move

• By going through this leveling up exercise over and over again, you will force yourself to think at a higher level and appreciate how different “levels” of your organization and the world within which it operates are different

This is one of the single hardest things for people to do, especially when they are growing into leaders who have to think more strategically. Being “strategic” is just carefully applying an understanding of many different factors to a situation, in a way that is hopefully novel and ideally effective.

OK, so if the above example wasn’t enough, here are more ways to level up your thinking.

• The next time you hear someone say something…anything, ask: “What is the broader context within which this comment is being made?”

  • Personal example: If someone is upset about something, ask why they’re upset. Visualize their context, try to imagine the day they’ve had, and try to consider all of the factors they’re contending with in their life

  • Work Example: If someone says, “we just need to execute” and you don’t fully understand how to do that, or you need to find a way to do it creatively, think about what the strategy of the team is, what the strategy of the division is, what the priorities of the company are

• The next time you’re working on anything at work, think about all of the factors outside of your direct sphere of control that could impact the work and its ability to drive results/outcomes.

  • Example: you’re building out a report for your boss. You could just do the report and send it in, or…

    • You could think about why the hell you’re doing this report in the first place. Big theme of my writing is alignment to some bigger goal. So how does the work align to the goals of your boss, their boss, etc.

    • You could think about what external factors are impacting the work (dependencies? Marketing? Sales? Ops? Product? Engineering? Competition (what are your competitors doing?)? etc. etc.)

    • You could think about where this work should go — who else would benefit from seeing this?

    • Bonus tactic: You could think about how this report could be 10% better than the last one you submitted

Let’s return to the story I shared above, and what the executive really wanted when she wanted her colleague to see the bigger picture. She wanted him to think bigger!

She was waiting for him to say “we’re going to create an entirely new suite of offerings to address a use case our product hadn’t yet been applied to, but that our customers were asking for” instead of, “I think we need to be more efficient with our resources” (how work is assigned to various team members).

It can be extremely energizing to get outside of your immediate context — what you see in front of and around you — and to look up, and to imagine what it’s like to see your situation from a different level…almost visualizing your situation as if you were watching a performance in a theater, seated in the front row.

And then imagining how much more of the stage and theater you’d see by sitting a little further back, and a little further back, and a little further up…

Practice thinking at a higher altitude, and you’ll be able to see more nuance and complexity around you, and you just might start to make sense of it.