BLT #34: How Do We Miss A Gorilla?. . .By Looking Too Hard For Something Else

One of the most common causes of missed signals in our business results, our industry trends and our own performance is that we are looking and working so intently toward something else.  It just gets by us.  I found a great story on this and I'd like to offer you a See-Think-Act to help you to step back and see things others don't - and then do something with your insight.

"All ideas come about through some sort of observation. It sparks an attitude; some object or emotion causes a reaction in the other person." -- Graham Chapman

Seeing Is Believing...Isn't it?
A group of business leaders - including you - is asked to watch a short video of two teams of people passing a basketball back and forth and perform one simple task - count the number of passes made during the one minute video.  Simple.  Straightforward.  Success is clear.

While you are watching the video, and studiously counting the number of passes being made,  a person in a black gorilla suit walks in front of the people passing the ball and stands facing the camera.  The ersatz gorilla pounds its chest twice, turns and walks away. 
At the end of the video 95 % of you get the number of passes right, the others only miss by 1 or 2.  Very detail oriented, committed group.  Knew the task.  Knew what mattered.  Got it done.  Check it off the list.

And what about the gorilla?  When asked an open-ended question about noticing "anything else interesting in the video", only 60% of your group had even noticed there was a gorilla.  In fact you'd thought, "What are they talking about?  There wasn't any gorilla in that video." 

We've Got Tunnel Vision.
This story is adapted a bit from the one told by Michael Mauboussin in his 2009 Book Think Twice: Harnessing the Power of Counterintuition.  During his discussion of common decision and thinking blocks we experience he tells this story as an example of what he terms 'tunnel vision' - our inability to pick up signals outside what we are trained to look for.  Our focus on results, which we like to talk about as a strength, can actually impede our ability to notice important nuances.  An actual, bona fide, real-life example (with names and business details changed to protect the innocent) might help.

Delphos Services, Inc. provides an array of services to small employers, typically with less then 100 employees with the most profitable group having somewhere between 50 and 100 employees purchasing 3 or more of Delphos' services.  During the past 18 months they've been struggling - seemingly all of sudden - to hit their new client goals - the single metric reported in nearly every board meeting and employee gathering.  It matters.  To keep the business growing, it's important that new clients are added faster than defecting clients leave (it's a very transient, competitive business).  Prior to this time, they've been growing at an impressive rate, exceeding new client and net growth goals for 3 years running.

Further complicating the situation is that all the growth of the past three years was not producing the promised profits - in fact margins were shrinking almost daily.  What was happening?  It turns out that all the growth 'success' that everyone had been touting the past three years was coming from clients with 25 or less employees that purchased only 1 or 2 services.  All that growth had come from the wrong types of clients. 

LESSON FOR US: The business' leaders missed it because they were so focused on adding clients that they missed the nuance of understanding exactly whom they were adding as clients and whether or not they should have been.

Had any of those conversations lately?  What seemed at first like a surprise change in success, you now realize has been coming for some time, but no one was talking about it.  Or, worse, someone did notice and shrunk from the opportunity to raise it...after all, bonuses were at stake that were mostly based on growth.

See-Think-Act
This type of 'tunnel vision' goes on everyday in meetings, projects and business planning efforts in businesses of all sizes and shapes and industries.  And I think as a starting point we can start to find a way out with these three steps:

1. SEE beyond what's going on in your 'board presentation' business results.  What are the 3 to 5 key drivers of that particular measure and look what's happening to them.  Anytime someone tells you - or if your the one telling others - that the most important goal your organization has is 'growth' (or any SINGLE metric) you better...
2. THINK through the impact metrics have on your overall performance and alignment of your organization.  Does it cause behaviors you might not intend?  Delphos leaders missed the internal struggles going on to meet pricing targets the sales team were placing on the finance people.   To the sales people, it was an easy question of gaining clients - just need some help from finance.  The finance people felt a responsibility to manage profitability - and were probably the first to notice this problem.
3. ACT to re-align all your metrics to your strategy.  Problems like Delphos' are  really strategy questions begging to be asked.  "Is this our business?"  "Is there a gorilla jumping up and down in front of me and I am missing it?"  Ensure that teamwork and aligned actions are valued throughout the organization by ensuring their goals fit one another.  People work on what their goals and objectives - and pay - tell them to. 

Identifying misalignment in your organization may not be easy to spot.  The key is know the gorilla is probably there - whether misalignment or execution challenges - it just needs the right person to notice it.

Happy hunting.
_________________________________

Copyright - Lance Kesterson and Broadlight Thinking, 2010