What's the context?
Some time ago I read a quote that has stuck with me from the economist Tyler Cowen: "Context is that which is scarce".
Understanding why decisions or events play out the way they do comes from the facts, influences, circumstances and overall situation that explain them. Having led teams large and small in large, complex organizations, I've found that thinking about context (and often digging for it) has been a key success factor. Amongst high functioning staff, the biggest blunders (of my own and others) often trace back to misapprehension of context.
As a manager, thinking about context has helped me in two key ways:
- I much more recognize the need to over-communicate (something often advised in leadership trainings). Most staff (and customers!) are busy and may miss the reasoning behind a decision. Repetition helps ensure people have the best possible chance of knowing why a decision was made, that might otherwise seem unintelligible, dispiriting, etc.
- Recognizing the scarcity of context has helped my own awareness. Leaders themselves do not always have full context for the strategy, personnel, financial and organizational decisions around us.
In hierarchical organizations the context for decisions dissipates the farther away from decisionmakers one gets. Humans are sense-making creatures, so we all fabricate reasons of our own in the absence of solid information. As a leader we work within constraints. There's always a balance between full transparency and situations requiring opacity. I strongly favor candor whenever possible (openness > politics!).
And as I write this- I realize I've been mostly thinking about the workplace, but the same applies personally and to the political sphere. One of the premises in Tyler's blog is about the wisdom of seeking out more context-- the need to dig. Sometimes the most valuable perspective is several layers below the surface and your judgment may evolve as you learn.
Photo by Markus Leo on Unsplash
