66 PART I Knowing What to Do
ask, “What else could it be?” we expand the frame and allow for a broader and even deeper understanding of the problem or problems.
When the world economic crisis hit in 2008, we—the press and the public—looked for who was responsible for this meltdown. We had to have a villain. And there were villains, but by solely focusing on the cheats and crooks, it distracted us from looking at the underlying causes of the crisis. Complexity came later. Context matters.
The more you understand the context you are working in, the better you will be able to lead change effectively. But that is very difficult for most of us. All of us know a person who has laser-like vision when it comes to one area of expertise, say IT, HR, or finance. They are great at showing you what’s not working in that area and suggesting ways to fix those problems, but they miss other cues. I recall one organization that branded one person on the team “the quality guy” (and that was not a compliment). When he spoke, people expected him to link every topic to quality improvement. Not that people didn’t agree with him about the importance of quality improvement, they just thought that he missed the importance of other burning issues, like how will we service the debt next month?
Participants in a study were asked to watch a video of two groups on a basketball court. One team was dressed in white and the other in black. Par- ticipants were asked to count the number of passes the team in white made. While they watched the video, a woman with an umbrella walked through the center of the court. Only about 20 percent noticed her. When another group of participants in the study watched the video without being given a task, everyone saw the woman with the umbrella. The phenomenon is called selective looking. (In a similar experiment, a man in a gorilla suit moonwalked through the scene with similar results.)2
Many plans for change emphasize the financial issues. Others give a lot of attention to the technical side of the change. Others put a strong emphasis on the human issues associated with the change. So, you might think that it would be a good idea to make sure your plans included strat- egies for dealing with financial, technical, and human issues. And, of course, you would be correct, but you’d still be missing a big piece—and that’s context.
Many organizations support narrow thinking. They hire people to fill specific roles. Of course that makes sense, but it does create fiefdoms of