Driving With the Rearview Mirror
by Shawn Bohen
(Reading time: Less than 4 minutes)
In many professional workplaces, “knowing” is currency. It is how meaning and value are created. Figuring out what we know, how we know it, and how and when to share it, represents a significant part of many folks’ daily work life.
Covid dramatically upended our ability to rely on knowing.
For example, as I look back over these last few years, one of the things I have had to rethink (and help many of my clients with) was a belief — an absolute knowing — that so many things had to be done in person. Education, training, learning, hiring, firing, brainstorming, creating relationships, building trust, making decisions, raising capital, being creative… the list goes on. Today, all of that is being questioned, and rightfully so.
Conventional wisdom is usually based on historical facts and past successes. But we are likely to overlook both threats and opportunities if we insist on quickly surrendering to the familiar and driving with both eyes on the rearview mirror.
Release the Need to Know
Consider an alternative frame. Imagine a circle, a small wedge of which is what we know, another small wedge is what we don’t know, and the biggest wedge is what we don’t know we don’t know.Now imagine that this biggest part of the circle is where the most powerful insights and learning reside.
Adopting this new frame, which requires us to sit amidst uncertainty — the space of “productive discomfort” — may cause us to feel deeply uneasy. After all, as leaders, we are socialized to have answers. But are we seeing truth or just working from habit, whether out of fear of appearing to lack mastery or simply by following individual biases?
Not knowing is the generative option. Especially now, with all the volatility in the world — social, economic, political, environmental, and more.
Individual Knowing
So how do we begin to shed light on the biggest wedge? It is essential to get curious, and move into learning mode.
Choose newness over the familiar. Talk to people you don’t know. Take risks and make mistakes. Do it the hard way, by challenging your brain instead of reaching for Google or turning on GPS. Practice listening with humility. Not just to tolerate diverse values and views, but to actually expand your understanding, broaden your perspective, and appreciate all that is unknown.
I am not suggesting we ignore history, only that we don’t give it more privilege than it deserves. In uncertain times we cling to what we have done before, if only to lessen the discomfort of not knowing.
Organizational Knowing
Organizations also have an opportunity to undergo this kind of exploration. For example, the generative “orthodoxy exercise” can be used to help reveal when rearview thinking is dominating and preventing us from pursuing new opportunities with greater impact.
Participants divide into small groups (3–4 people) and work from the hypothetical premise that their organization has been purchased. They then address the following questions:
What would the new owner change (strategy, business model, target customer, process, structure, etc.)?
Why would they make these changes?
What are the rules, beliefs, policies, mindsets, and misconceptions that have been in the way of us not making these changes ourselves?
Find the Yummy Tension
I am not advocating for the complete dismissal of all that came before.But there is a sweet spot between that and blind adherence to habit and tradition for its own sake.
If we can sit with the discomfort that accompanies uncertainty, confident that the answers will come if we are willing to think, observe, remain patient, and know that we don’t need to know, we can uncover things that might otherwise be missed entirely.
Whether in a car or in an organization, over-relying on the rearview mirror is a dangerous way to drive.