Are you seeing the bigger picture?

The image above is from a jigsaw puzzle. It is reasonable to say the image is one of a lighthouse.

However, when you look in more detail, the actual lighthouse was only 39 pieces out of 500 for the whole jigsaw i.e. just under 8% of the whole picture.

It just goes to show that we often see only the important parts of our scene and ignore the rest. Our eyes “see” everything but the image is filtered by our brain to only consciously “see” the essential parts. This would have been important in an evolutionary sense - for our ancestors, it doesn’t matter how much grass is on the savanna if there’s also a sabre toothed tiger in front of you!!

It can also explain why, when you take a picture, you may find the camera doesn’t really do it justice. You know, when you’re on holiday, the view looks amazing from your hotel room but when you take a snap, the camera image is meh!  The camera is letting in light and taking in a literal image, our brain interprets the images it takes in. 

So, what does that mean at work?

Teams are often so focussed on their own remit they don’t see a bigger picture. This can be reflected as teams or departments operating in silos. Or, maybe, as not seeing improvements or other impacts of their work. Or, not seeing how one piece of work might link with another, the interdependencies of work information. 

For example, an individual employee goes off sick following a miscarriage. The line manager knows, the HR Administrator managing sickness records knows, and the Payroll team knows for sick pay. But the HRBP supporting employees heading for maternity leave doesn’t know and so has the potential to send a very upsetting message to the employee. 

Another example is often around employee appraisals. The aim of the HR team is to get the annual appraisal exercise completed, chase up the last of the managers to complete their documents, declare it all done! But what about the training needs identified? What about any issues raised? Who follows up? Do you have ratings as part of your appraisals and, if so, other than pay, how do you use that information? Could you be analysing average ratings by team or department? Or, perhaps, use to feed in to other processes such as internal promotions or succession planning?

Want to know more? Want some ideas specific to your organisation? Get in touch and I can provide a fresh opinion from a place of experience, with an initial free of charge consultation. I have a variety of experiences, in different industries and sectors to be able to bring different ideas in my work and I’m happy to share!