What Do We See?
Seeing differently is leading differently, says Korn FerryCEO Gary Burnison.
Gary Burnison is CEO of Korn Ferry. For more career advice, read his latest book, I Need a Job!
Dizzy and disoriented. Hazy and headaches. It was back in my college days, and I couldn’t figure out what was going on.
When I confided to a friend, he didn’t say a word at first—just walked across the room and picked up a deck of cards left on the table. He held up one. “What is it?”
“Three of diamonds,” I said confidently.
“It’s the eight of hearts,” he told me. “You need to get your eyes checked.”
Sitting in my car after leaving the optometrist several days later, I couldn’t believe what a difference a pair of glasses made. Everything was so clear, so precise. The most startling—brake lights. Glasses off, they were blobs of red. Glasses on, amazing crispness.
It was as if the world had opened up to me through a completely new lens. And I had to ask myself: what had I been missing?
Today, it’s easy to feel a little dazed and confused. The world can appear blurry at times.
Or does it?
It’s an existential truth. As humans, we have always clung to our need for certainty. But the reality is, our state of being is uncertainty—which has always been disguised and clouded by our illusions of certainty.
So, perhaps it’s time for a new prescription. Because here’s the thing—seeing differently is leading differently. And leadership is not really about achieving perfect clarity. It is about accurately perceiving reality, creating meaning, and then helping people move through ambiguity. Look at the photo above. What do you see? Do you notice an elderly man, walking slowly, carrying something in his hand—a cane perhaps? Or are your eyes drawn to the image of a jazz saxophonist, playing music for the enjoyment of others?
As leaders, to truly see the entire picture across the organization, we must escape the attic of our minds. It all comes down to opening the aperture to vast opportunities ahead.
When we go through any transformation—organizational or personal—we are creating a new identity. As part of that process, taking a pause gives us time to reflect. Think of it as tapping Google Earth—zooming out before zooming in. Context can be liberating.
Sometimes the issue isn’t what we’re seeing; it’s the lens we see through. That’s when our perception becomes our projection. After all, the goal isn’t to regain perfect focus in a murky world.
We will rarely have crystal clear lines of sight. And none of us have the luxury of being able to wait around for all the information—or even most of it—before making a decision or taking action. It just doesn’t work that way. As leaders we need to give ourselves grace, particularly in the midst of rapid change and a lack of visibility, to make a “good decision,” until it’s no longer a good decision.
We are simply making sure the lyrics and the melody are in sync. In other words, we can’t just take people where we want to go. Rather, it’s about meeting them where they are and taking them to another place—at the right pace.
After all, strategy is not just direction and destination—it’s also velocity.
And only when we widen our view with intention do we open ourselves up to a much bigger world.
