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Something Worth SharingThe Glaringly Obvious One of my favourite thought leaders is Peter Senge, who once said: “Business and human endeavours are systems…we tend to focus on snapshots of isolated parts of the system. And wonder why our deepest problems never get solved.”
I was reminded of these wise words last week while doing a jigsaw puzzle. As any good engineer tends to, I have a system. I begin with finding all the straight edges, select the four corners and build the ‘frame’. Then - and only then - I progress to building the picture within it. However, this particular jigsaw wasn’t brand new and while creating the outer ‘frame’ found that two pieces seemed to be missing, resulting in a broken frame. I kept sorting through the various pieces keenly hunting for the magical pieces that would finally connect the frame and allow me to progress. Over the next couple of days I couldn’t find the missing pieces while simultaneously growing in frustration. I was stuck in my thinking about the missing pieces and hunting in a box of assorted puzzle pieces - determined to find them. My ‘system’ was broken just as the outer frame of the puzzle was. I walked away from the puzzle and weighed up my options. I could a) just continue anyway and enjoy the jigsaw for what it was, b) bin it, or c) get more frustrated trying to find the possibly lost pieces. Just as I decided to opt for (a) and decided to change my perspective, I spotted something…I looked closer at what I had put together and saw that two pieces didn’t quite fit right. I swapped them round and ‘bingo!’, the frame was complete. I wasn’t missing anything at all, just the ability to look and think differently at what was in front of me. The ability to step back and see all possibilities, all pieces and how everything needs to work together is a skill we can all too easily neglect. When we take the ‘quick fix’ option and try and solve a problem by overly focusing on an isolated issue, we miss the ‘often glaringly’ obvious answer. If you want to resolve something in a meaningful and sustainable way, pause and consider the whole system before jumping to a short-term solution.
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