The Big Picture: Your Antidote to Chaos
Details overwhelm you when you lose sight of the big picture. Perspective enables you to reject urgent trivialities.
You’re lost in the weeds when you rush from one issue to the next. Chaos and fatigue prevail when busyness obscures the big picture.
Energize your leadership by rising above individual situations.
5 reasons the big picture matters:
- It reminds you that others are important. Success requires others.
- It enables focus. You thrive in a world of distractions by ignoring what doesn’t matter.
- It defines progress. Wins that matter align with the big picture.
- It guides course correction. Any path will do when you don’t care where you’re going.
- It provides motivation for maximum engagement.
7 ways to reconnect with the big picture:
- Wander around asking, “What value are we creating in the world?”
- Disengage from pressing issues for an hour. Review your schedule with the big picture in mind.
- Observe ongoing activities and ask, “How does this move us closer to where we want to go?”
- See what happens when you stop telling people what to do. Discretionary action reveals felt purpose.
- Watch people working. Ask, “What do their actions reveal about our organization?”
- Ask an outsider to observe and describe your organization. Choose someone with expertise and candor. Avoid those with an agenda. Ask them for descriptions, not explanations of your organization. Explore their observations without defensiveness.
- Ask yourself, “Who adds energy and who drains it?” Create profiles of key people that describe the value they add. Notice people who block progress.
Bonus: Schedule “big picture” time, at least once or twice a month.
What happens when people get lost in details?
How might leaders rise above urgent trivialities?
Still curious:
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What It Means to See the Bigger Picture (And Why It Matters) | Indeed.com Canada
Purpose is found in ‘big picture’ answering – Why do we do this? Purposse drives us forward.
Thanks Dan.
Well put, Ken. The question, “Why do we do this?” is most powerful when we have courage to respond, “I don’t know.” If we don’t know why we’re doing something, maybe we shouldn’t be doing it at all.
Grit only makes sense when the reason to have it is compelling.
Love the picture that illustrates “details overwhelm.”
To focus on the big picture consider these questions. What is our mission (purpose) and what are the highest level goals that we want to achieve.
When people get lost in the details, they lose energy/motivation and become ineffective–working on the wrong things.
Good morning, Paul. Powerful thought. What a waste to work on the wrong things. Life is brief. We are frail. And energy is precious.