Perception
London: Nikon D200
“And I wonder
What does it take
To be so calm,
To shrug so boldly at the darkness”
(Paula Aamli)
I’ve learned to reflect on how I see the world.
A woman in a white jacket and clickety-clack heels keeps her distance from two shadowy figures on a London street.
You see one, the other is me, holding the camera.
The man doesn’t make eye contact and steps off the pavement as he passes. The clickety-clack heels seem to break into faster pace…. Is this going to get tricky…? But look closely; the eyeline of the photograph is telling. I’m 6’2” and that matters. Add in that I’m male, fit, strong and from my perspective, things are looking OK for now…. But I keep half an eye on the guy as he walks away.
Just in case.
Over the years, I’ve also learned that to misread this kind of dynamic situation could be risky, deadly even. Our perception of often momentary events is critical and, as we are distracted by the next thing (when will these people get out of my shot…?), we tend to miss what is unfolding around us.
Perceptive skills, noticing, paying attention, are vital to ensuring our health and safety. At an organisational scale, ‘perception error’ runs at more than 70% in the analysis of ‘occurrences’ such as ships running aground, production line stoppages or other industrial accidents.
Our social perception can be just as problematic. We get overly busy and don’t notice that one of our colleagues is struggling, we miss details, we don’t spot an absent criteria then miss the deadline, and our collective performance falls off the rails.
On a wider scale, we don’t pay attention to the experience of marginalised groups, we ignore disadvantage and deprivation and, when the cracks in our society tear open, we say, “Oh, I just didn’t realise that’s how it was….”
We have to improve our perceptional skills.
The way we see the world can feel like an obvious truth. But we need to constantly question and check ourselves. And it’s not just about being clear what is happening. It’s about how and why things are happening, and checking our assumptions about the way things have come to unfold and emerge.
You might say this is about the wide-eyed fascination and curiosity of ‘the beginner’s mind’. It certainly is about asking questions, checking in with each other, high quality communication, listening well and working towards a shared picture of what is happening in our teams, our society, our world.
It’s certainly not about unquestioningly taking things for granted.
If we are allowing ourselves ‘to shrug so boldly at the darkness’ we are probably getting it wrong.
Notes:
Back in my military aviation days, we knew that our ‘situational awareness’ kept us alive. For a broader view of the application of ‘SA’, have a look at at a couple of books by Rhona Flin (and colleagues): ‘Safety at the Sharp End’ or ‘Sitting in the Hot Seat.’ If you can still find it, ‘Decision Making Under Stress’ is a foundational contribution though, these days, incredibly pricey.
Also in the Human Factors field, Sidney Dekker’s ‘The Field Guide to Human Error Investigations’ is a helpful read in addressing systemic factors in organisational error.
The artists and philosophers always get there first and, elsewhere on this website, you’ll find poet Mary Oliver’s instructions for living a life: ‘Pay attention, Be astonished, Tell about it.”
Finally, I was astonished by my colleague Paula Aamli’s perceptive poem:
“Those people
Who do not fear the dark
Stride through the darkness as though lit by torches from within
Those people
I –
Stumble and stop.
Scared of the dark
I do not dare to follow
Those people
But skirt the edges of the darkness
Jumping and splashing from pool to pool of street lamp light,
Taking a thin comfort in the cold white glare
That drops towards me from those blind suspended eyes.
And I wonder
What does it take
To be so calm,
To shrug so boldly at the darkness
Like
Those people”
(Those People - Paula Aamli)
See also:
