Sometimes I hear people say, “I don’t need to know what the ‘big picture’ is…I’m happy and content just to do my job.” Problem with this type of thinking is that unless the people who serve our customers know and can see ‘the big picture’, it’s easy for them to get sidetracked. When they’re mired in the details of the day-to-day efforts to satisfy the needs of others, it’s easy for them to ‘lose sight of the forest and only be able to see the trees’. And when that happens, it’s easy for them to get lost. To work on details that might not help the company reach its long-term goals. Just like leaders need to be able to understand and manage the details, team members need to be able to see the ‘big picture’, so they can understand clearly how their specific efforts fit in. “How we get there is as important as where we are going”, but if we don’t know where we’re supposed to be going, it will be hard to choose the best way to get there!
