Knowing Does Not Equal Doing
As we help all involved move forward, and as we understand that the past is constantly influencing the present and how we perceive the future, leaders must help people over come their blind spots, and learn to see the whole story of what is happening on many different levels. In order to do this work, which will change how people think and work, we must recognize that there are at least five different kindness of blindness within organizations moving through prolonged uncertainty.
First, there is temporal blindness when we see the present without the understanding how the past is impacting it. Second, there is relationship blindness where we do not understand the social networks that are happening all around us, and their impact on individual and collection execution. Third, there is strategic blindness, which happens when we don’t see our strategy as a whole organization. This also includes a lack of understanding that having a strategy, and executing a strategy are not the same thing. Fourth, there is context blindness, which happens when we can see the whole organization, but we can not see the environmental context within which the whole organization is working and moving through. Fifth, there is spatial blindness where we see parts of a system but we do not comprehend how the whole system works.
When all or a majority of these different forms of blindness are taking place at the same time period, the result is macro-myopia, namely a failure in being able to grasp the big picture connections that are happening all around us. As a result, we become like the legendary blind people describing an elephant as they each grasp a different part of its anatomy. Then, we mistake the parts for the whole, and we lose perspective and miss the context in which key or isolated events occur within uncertainty.
At the same time, one element within macro-myopia is scale blindness. Some days, we miss the big picture, because we are concentrating on the details. Other days, it is vice versa. And some times, in the midst of prolonged uncertainty, leaders choose to rapidly scale up a solution in order to solve a problem.
From my experience and observations, this “one size fits all” solution can be the foundation for so many problems. This is in part because many do not understand how scaling works. As Robert Sutton and and Huggy Rao in their book, Scaling Up Excellence: Getting To More Without Settling For Less (Crown Business, 2014), write: “Scaling requires grinding it out, and pressing each person, team, group, division, or organization to make one small change after another in what they believe, feel, or do…. When big organizations scale well, they focus on ‘moving a thousand people forward a foot at a time, rather than moving one person forward by a thousand feet’.” They then share: “Effective scaling depends on believing and living a shared mindset throughout your group, division, or organization. Scaling is analogous to a ground war rather than an air war because developing, spreading and updating a mindset requires relentless vigilance. It requires stating the beliefs and living the behavior, and then doing so again and again.”
When we grasp this perspective that scaling is a ground war, not an air war, and that the goal is to move forward collectively one foot at a time, then creating a shared mindset is mission critical to success, and dealing with the aforementioned different kinds of blindness is very important to this process. For in the end, the best leaders understand that knowing something is not the same as doing something, and during prolonged uncertainty, doing the right things for the right reasons, and at the right time will make a huge difference in the short and long haul.
Drop By Drop
“A river is made drop by drop,” notes an old Afghan proverb. It reminds us that significant achievements can come from on-going, small and consistent efforts. It also points out that patience and perseverance in combination with incremental progress really does make a difference. In short, big results are always the sum of small actions.
During a period of prolonged uncertainty, leaders need to focus on numerous small, and consistent actions over time. They must adapt to change, and uncertainty. Still, when leaders do the aforementioned fundamentals well, we can navigate our way through this time period.Then one day, uncertainty will pass, and we will, individually and collectively, be prepared for what comes next.
But in the beginning, drop by drop, a river is made. Same goes for us and our work as leaders. Step by step, progress is made. Then, with patience, these small actions create something substantial, and effective, even in the midst of prolonged uncertainty.
© Geery Howe 2026
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