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The problem with this analogy (as the author ties it up to the end point) is it implies you're leading a team that simply can't see the reality. More often, t

The problem with this analogy (as the author ties it up to the end point) is it implies you're leading a team that simply can't see the reality. More often, the change in perspective allows the person in the back seat to see the car that is about to run a red light and smash into you, rather than it being a question of presenting them a better context.

JumpCrisscross 5y ago
> it implies you're leading a team that simply can't see the reality If everyone on the team has the same level of visibility into everything, there is insufficient specialization and/or utilization. The child in the analogy wasn't blinded from seeing the light ahead. He could theoretically access that information. But in practice, he didn't, and that lead to a miscommunication.
jonnycomputer 5y ago
The child wasn't seeing something that wasn't real. The child was looking at a different light. The miscommunication occurred because neither realized that they were looking at different lights.
dclowd9901 5y ago
I don’t think the story takes a position on who is right at what level (and, in fact, it sounds like the story teller herself concedes that leadership should be digging into why their teams are saying “red light” when it’s a green light). I think the story should be ingested as “we don’t know why someone else can’t obviously see what we see; that problem itself warrants investigations perhaps before any conversation about what to do next.” As it turns out, our company is currently having this problem: the market and employees of my company are screaming at the leadership to not follow through on a business plan, but leadership has their head buried in the sand and are bound and determined to move ahead because all they see is green lights. And sure, there’s enough anecdotes out there about people zagging when everyone else zigs, but I think an unspoken prerequisite to those anecdotes is that you at least made sure you understood why they were zigging.

JumpCrisscross 5y ago

> it implies you're leading a team that simply can't see the reality If everyone on the team has the same level of visibility into everything, there is insufficient specialization and/or utilization. The child in the analogy wasn't blinded from seeing the light ahead. He could theoretically access that information. But in practice, he didn't, and that lead to a miscommunication.

jonnycomputer 5y ago

The child wasn't seeing something that wasn't real. The child was looking at a different light. The miscommunication occurred because neither realized that they were looking at different lights.

dclowd9901 5y ago

I don’t think the story takes a position on who is right at what level (and, in fact, it sounds like the story teller herself concedes that leadership should be digging into why their teams are saying “red light” when it’s a green light). I think the story should be ingested as “we don’t know why someone else can’t obviously see what we see; that problem itself warrants investigations perhaps before any conversation about what to do next.” As it turns out, our company is currently having this problem: the market and employees of my company are screaming at the leadership to not follow through on a business plan, but leadership has their head buried in the sand and are bound and determined to move ahead because all they see is green lights. And sure, there’s enough anecdotes out there about people zagging when everyone else zigs, but I think an unspoken prerequisite to those anecdotes is that you at least made sure you understood why they were zigging.