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To work out what to do, you need an active understanding of what is actually going on. If you are driving a car, the way to do that is not to stare at the instrument panel, but to look out of the window. If you are running a business, it’s not a bad idea to do the equivalent once in a while.
This is a nice summary of one of the fatal flaws of leadership, especially in the era where Bezos and data made him a ton of money, and many want to emulate that because males (who typically run companies) have no definition for success other than “get yer nut.” Because of the supposed focus on data — which isn’t nearly as true as we think it is — “leaders” spend all week “looking at the data,” which is hysterical as all hell because oftentimes, these guys have no idea what they’re even looking at. They stare at the instrument panel, often in the form of spreadsheets or CRM print-outs, and they’re not looking out the window. As a result, elements of that organization — i.e. the culture — crash into a tree or rear-end a truck metaphorically, because the leader is just looking at “the data” as opposed to actually looking up once in a while and seeing where the car (in this metaphor, the car is the company) is headed.
You don’t drive a car just by staring at your MPH and oil life. You don’t build a company just by staring at…
