Wise Leaders share the big picture

The ‘big picture’ is about getting things into perspective. It enables us to set priorities and find meaning in our work. It is fundamental for clarity and focus.

The dictionary describes perspective as ‘a way of regarding situations, facts etc. and judging their relative importance’. A leader needs to be able to answer the question ‘how and in what way is my work relevant to the entire team and organisation’.

For members of a team or group sharing a common goal, it is also about ‘the relationship of aspects of a subject to each other and to a whole’. In other words, it is a framework within which each person can collaborate with others. It creates an automatic awareness of the bigger picture within which the team must perform together and enables a common purpose to emerge.

It is like taking the team up in a helicopter to see the relationship of their house to the entire village. On the ground, details of the house are engaging but several hundred feet above the ground, the relationship of the house to its surroundings becomes far more compelling; the house is a small part of the whole village. If we were to be in a plane and fly higher, the village would become part of a country. In the same way, a leader should be able to take an individual up to the team and then to the higher organisation level to appreciate aligned priorities.

Many years ago I was being given a tour at Robertson’s Jams in Manchester. The work was largely automated and the employees were doing jobs that seemed extremely tedious. I came across one woman whose job was to watch the filled jars go past (at a very fast rate) and pick out any that had black (burnt) bits of peel in them. She was fully absorbed and carefully picked out the odd jar to look at it with concern. Unable to imagine how she could do this job with such enthusiasm, I asked her why she was working with such intensity in such a boring job. ‘Oh, she said, you don’t understand. Our company wants to be the most loved jam maker in the world so our jam needs to be the best. This job may be boring but it is the most important job in the factory. ‘Why is that?’ I asked. ‘ If any of these jars reaches the public with a black bit in it, the company will get a bad reputation. We’ll sell less and we could all be out of work’. Her supervisor had regularly taken her up to the higher level of the organisation viewpoint  explaining this to her in a way that gave meaning to her work.

People rarely work in isolation and today their work is rarely this simple, but it contributes to something greater. Without constant reminders, we can become lost and unable to see the forest for the trees. A good leader helps us to take a higher view.

Employees show many symptoms when lacking perspective:

• Too much work and stress because of an inabliity to prioritise. Today there is so much work for people to do that they need to be able to prioritise the most important tasks for performance. Knowing why they need to perform helps to clarify work.

• There is a focus on individual achievement and this can develop into lack of support for others and a feeling of ‘every person for themselves’.

• Teams may be a group of competent individuals who work for the same person but are unable to achieve together. Such teams fail to collaborate well and have ineffective meetings because they find other team members’ input irrelevant.

• Shared purpose is difficult to identify without an understanding of the bigger picture and high performing teams rely on shared purpose and goals. Teams under-perform.

If there is a disconnection in peoples minds between the organisation, the team and the individual, the leaders work becomes far more difficult. If there is a clear link – people are able to judge their own priority activities without direction from a leader - the team is able to self organize. Effective leaders also build a connection to the even bigger picture of the external world of customers, community and shareholders. The leader aligns and connects goals and results within this big picture.

I can hear you asking ‘isn’t it important for members of a team to add different skills and experiences to the organization’? Yes, of course it is; people will use their talents to do their specific jobs. But they should choose what is important to do by understanding why they are doing it. The why is the bigger picture – the organisation priority. The leaders role is not to tell people what to do but to ask why they think they should be doing it how will it contribute to the bigger picture.

Here are five actions that leaders take to share the big picture:

1. Explain how an individual’s goals contribute to the team
2. Relate each person’s success as a contribution to the team
3. In meetings, relate team goals to organisation goals
4. Refer to team success as contribution to the organisation
5. Always put individual and team activity into the context of  customer results

Creating focus and alignment is a critical leadership practice; creating an understanding of the big picture is basic - without it there can be no aligned focus for the individual or a team within the organisation.