A Hare Squashed In The Road…Did You See It?
“They drove past the place where Wallander had run over the hare. A flock of crows took off as they approached. The hare was already dismembered to the point of unrecognizability. Wallander told Modin that he was the one who had run over it.
‘You always see hundreds of run-over hares along this road,’ Wallander remarked. ‘But it’s only once you kill one yourself that you really see it.’ “
Those of you with an interest in exceptionally well-written and clever mysteries recognize the name Wallander. He’s the Chief of Detectives in a small Swedish town created by award winning author Henning Mankell. The quote is from his book Firewall.
Detective Wallander could be talking about quite a few of us. We look but we don’t see. It takes “killing” something…or otherwise having a direct involvement with something…before it grabs our attention and focuses us on really thinking about it. So much of value passes us by like a dead hare lying in the road, without our noticing it.
Modin, a 17-year-old hacker extraordinaire, is helping Wallander break some criminal code with worldwide consequences. Code written by equally exceptional coders.
“ ‘Exactly,’ Modin said thoughtfully. ‘That’s it. Of course.’
Wallander looked inquiringly at him.
‘I’m thinking about what we’re looking for in Falk’s computer, ’Modin explained. ‘The way we need to think about it may be to look for something we’ve seen a hundred times without really noticing.’ “
The answers are often right in front of you, hidden in plain sight. We are so used to seeing them that they become like dead hares, or other dead animals on the road. We drive past them, noticing them only enough to swerve around them.
You don’t need to “kill the hare” in order to see it, you just need a willingness to observe things in a new light, to shed your overreliance on and comfort with existing ideas and information…and conclusions.
It’s hard to see something you’ve seen a hundred times, which is where consultants come in. They bring with them a set of new eyes to get a new view.
Welcome a set of new eyes into your company. Better yet, get yourself a set of new eyes. What it takes is a willingness to question everything. What if things you deeply believe to be true turn out to be incorrect? How would that change your thinking? Reevaluate what you take as givens and see what new possibilities and opportunities result when you clear away the barriers that box you in.
Keep an open mind. The answers are there, hidden in plain sight. Remove your blinders and let your eyes capture all the ideas that surround you.
Learn from Detective Wallander. You don’t have to kill the hare to notice the message it carries.
Steve, thanks for bringing up this simile with the extraordinary Swedish literature. As an outsider cooperating as C-level I will list some of the benefits a “new set of eyes” can bring to the organisations: it is able to observe anomalies insiders cannot see, it is able to challenge people in way others cannot do (for fear or lack of knowledge), it is able to provide an overall view that is hardly to get otherwise, as functions, responsibilities and data are so spread around, it is able to bring new ideas from my outsider experience, it is able to talk and listen to all employees in the organisation, from frontline to C-level employees, it is able to join the dots from different silos/managers/teams that otherwise would never interact with each other, it dares to ask questions/request more data to find out more. Of course you need a brave leader to sponsor these outsiders as you may get some unexpected conclusions and innovative suggestions not all can deal with