Are You Bigger Than Your Biggest Problem?

By Carolyn Thornlow

If you’re constantly putting out fires, how can you possibly get in front of it all?

Albert Einstein is often attributed with the quote:

No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it

While the quote captures the intent of his message, it is nonetheless a misattribution. Or, more aptly, a sentiment morphed over time. The exact quote, from a 1946 New York Times article was: "A new type of thinking is essential if mankind is to survive and move to higher levels."

This morph is reminiscent of an old trope that consultants have used to explain how operating procedures become set. The story goes that a mother was passing down to her daughter her mother’s recipe for pot roast. She laid out what herbs to use and how to salt the beef and what liquids to use for braising. And then she said: now cut off the ends of the pot roast and place in your roasting pan. The daughter, eager beneficiary of the time-tested recipe, asked: why cut off the ends? Her mother, having never asked this question herself, called her mother, to find out why. She came back to her daughter with the answer: Oh. Grandma said she didn’t have a pan large enough to hold the pot roast.

Things change and transform and become gospel. The message, or the practice, may appear true to what we’re doing, but takes on traits that can be superfluous, wasteful or even adverse. They originated in situations that no longer apply and were never examined as time went by.

Despite its morphing, I like the quote “No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it”. It is succinct. And it is true and the probable cause for being stuck, in the weeds and always having to put out fires.

The implication that evolved quietly and slowly in the Einstein-attributed statement is an assumption that if you, as business owner or executive, had a hand in building your organization, then you can’t possibly get the firm out of a quandry or into a new mindset.

I say “hogwash.”

This is not to say that there never comes a time when the business needs a higher level of design, direction or management than its founders can bring. But even with professional management (of which I’m a big fan), the top dog has to “get it”. They have to see how it all comes together in order to sign off on decisions and in order to be at ease with letting professional managers professionally manage.

To veer not too far astray from the core of this message, let me say quickly: yes, there is a top dog. There are tons of articles about flattened org charts and egalitarian structures. They, too, have a place. But it depends on the task at hand. Collaboration needs guardrails more than it needs a top dog. And innovation needs freedom more than it needs guardrails. But there has to be a high level of consciousness that puts it all together in the right order and measure at the right time. That is accountability. And without accountability there is chaos.

There is a way out of what seems like a trap that your own conciousness can’t solve your own problems. The way out is Big Picture Thinking. Big Picture Thinking is as if a place. Should you be the curious and committed SMB leader who wants to come on this journey, I will take you through this place. To start, I will impress upon you that there are three levels of thinking.

LEVEL 3 THINKING – Getting Things Done...But

This is level where we think about work. We consider what is immediate. We respond to demands and requests. We put attention toward what is needed to get product or service out the door.

This is the domain of the majority of staff. As it should be. For professional service firms, where the owners and executives are the providers of what clients consume, they too live at Level 3 Thinking. Creators of apps and programs live here too.Level 3 is the land of productivity. And, it feels good, too.

It is familiar - the language and trappings are those in which the “worker” was trained. It is measurable. You know you’ve done well because you shipped so many units or the big deliverable or billed so many hours. That feels so much better than uncertainty, where the payoffs to effort may not appear until much further down the road.

Despite its necessity and lure, Level 3 Thinking is nonetheless categorically the weeds. That’s because every action that happens here becomes an element in a system. When living and thinking from this level, you literally can’t see the forest for the trees. And when it fails to function, it cannot be solved by the thinking that created it.

LEVEL 2 THINKING – Installing Systems...But

This is the level of thinking where you become aware that there actually is a system within which everyone is operating. At this level of thinking, someone decides that routine tasks can be automated. You hear about a technology that can mine information or facilitate communication or speed up routine tasks. You get excited to introduce it into the system. And this is good. To a point.

LEVEL 1 THINKING – Seeing How Everything Connects and Designing Actions for That

As far above Level 3 Thinking as Level 2 Thinking is, it still misses. For one thing, the cool technology that’s popular may not be relevant to your circumstances. Seizing upon it because it presented itself appealingly or because it was endorsed by a trusted colleague, doesn’t mean it was evaluated within the context of your system. To what else must the technology or project connect? What are some consequences you would have that your recommending-colleague’s situation has not? Considerations such as these are not found in either Level 2 or Level 3 Thinking. It is Level 1 Thinking – Big Picture Thinking – that casts your vision beyond the immediate. It doesn’t stop at the first easy answer – it interrogates.

But Level 1 has another distinguishing feature. It is the perch from which the leader sees the issues before they become felt. Level 2 is all well and good. It IS important to get solutions to problems. But more often than not, that doesn’t happen until the tension or break has occurred. It is when there is frustration and disharmony that Level 2 Thinking is called into action. The effects of those tensions have a long feedback loop. They affect culture, the signs of which go unnoticed until that causes yet another rupture down the road.

Living and thinking from Level 1 not only casts the net of thinking wide, it also goes deep. As it doesn’t stop at the first easy answer as we saw with Level 2 solution shopping, it also doesn’t stop at the first definition of the problem. It is easy to understand then how leaders of small businesses find themselves constantly putting out fires, living in what feels like chaos and, no matter what they do, bear never ending stress. They are living at Level 3 and popping into Level 2 with all good intentions, but only when circumstantially pushed. Never having found root causes, because they are thinking and doing from way on down in the weeds, the answers they apply don’t relieve or provide lasting cure.

The Job of Leadership is Big Picture Thinking

Applying the right resources to the right thing in the right measure at the right time is the job of leadership. It may feel like leaders are doing this when they come up with projects. But without the vision and testing and understanding of Level 1 Thinking, most heroic-seeming measures are most likely to fail.

The answer is to live and think out of Level 1 Thinking. Easier said than done. For one, there is not a roadmap for that. That’s where this series comes in. The think pieces in this Hey, Leader series will present ways to check your thinking and give you tools for making Big Picture Thinking a discipline.

This first grouping of articles will loop back into the fact that leaders are often alone in carrying the cognitive load for their businesses. They are certainly alone when they dare to think differently. Future article groupings will also tie the leadership job to other experiences that only they bear. No matter the topic, I hope not only to present tools, but to create the space you can come back to where you can perfect your thinking and and safely play out your now-expertly-vetted plans. And if I dare say, morphing Einstein further, give you A new type of thinking that is essential if the business of small business is to survive and move to higher levels.

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THE BIG PICTURE BRIEF

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•   How You Know You're in the Weeds

Your twenty-person consulting firm keeps missing deadlines. You jump in to finish deliverables, move assignments around and reassure clients. When the same thing happens again, you install project management software. Now everyone can see that the work is late. What remains unexamined is how partners promise delivery dates, how those promises draw on the same specialists and how each new “priority” displaces work already underway. You’re getting work out the door at Level 3 and improving its tracking at Level 2. But neither move changes the arrangement that keeps producing missed deadlines.

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•   How the Core of This Article Gets You Out of the Weeds

Being bigger than this problem means bringing more into view than the overdue assignment. At Level 1, you examine how client commitments, specialist availability and competing promises interact. Is the deadline a considered commitment or simply the date that helped secure the engagement? What happens to existing commitments when another partner promises the same person’s time? Those questions change what needs fixing. You can begin designing how the firm makes commitments, rather than repeatedly rescuing commitments it had little basis for making.

•   Big Picture Thinking Pillars and Frameworks

The Big Picture Plan™ walks leaders through Pillars and Frameworks, including Levels of Thinking and Seeing. In this firm, finishing a late report belongs at Level 3. Installing a scheduling system belongs at Level 2. Determining what that system must take into account—and whether the firm’s promises can coexist—requires Level 1. The distinction gives you a way to examine your own intervention: are you completing the work, improving a procedure or understanding the conditions within which both must function?

•   Big Picture Thinking Relieves, Cures and Opens Opportunity

You can develop the ability to find problems and opportunities before they fully present themselves. When you examine proposed engagements alongside existing commitments, a collision over specialist time can become visible before a deadline is missed. That gives you room to adjust the promise while there is still something useful to adjust. The relief comes from being better positioned to anticipate what needs your attention, instead of waiting for an overdue deliverable to announce it.

•   Follow the Series 

Hey, Leader! Series 1 — You’re Alone But Don’t Have to Be explores the cognitive load leaders carry, especially when they dare to think differently. This opening article establishes the levels of thinking from which the series will build a discipline for carrying that responsibility. A table of contents listing the other articles in the series will be posted regularly on the website in the Big Picture Plan Group: The Ante Room.

•   Where This Lives in The Big Picture Plan™

This article relates to Module 1 of The Big Picture Plan™. Its distinction among three levels of thinking establishes why improving the work requires a vantage point from which you can examine the system producing it.