Tropical Storm Lala wasn’t much of a storm where I live. We lost power for about 12 hours Sunday, and there was plenty of wind and rain, but compared with the Kona storm we experienced in March, it isn’t particularly remarkable.
That’s why it is surprising to learn that, several days later, parts of Hawaii are still without power. From where I am sitting, the extent of the disruption simply isn’t apparent. My experience of Lala isn’t wrong. It just isn’t representative of what is happening across the larger system.
Organizations create the same problem. We experience them locally. We see what’s happening in our team, our function, our location, or the handful of places where we spend most of our time. Those observations can be perfectly accurate while giving us a terribly incomplete picture of what’s happening elsewhere.
The danger is assuming what we see is representative of what we can’t. You can be completely right about what you see and completely wrong about your larger reality.