Valuing the External Perspective

We all have this innate sense that tells us when we are being watched — you can literally feel it when someone is looking at you. For instance, sometimes I find myself cruising through a hotel with purposeful stride, when out of the corner of my eye I catch a glimpse of someone I don't expect to be there, so I look closer.

Inevitably, I find this older, graying, short, pudgy dude looking back at me with an air of slight distain on his face, no doubt as a result of being scrutinized by some idiot a bit more closely than is publicly comfortable. About a half-second later I come to realize it is one of those huge wall mirrors. Shortly thereafter, it dawns on me, with a familiar note of surprise, just-who-that-idiot-is.

The reason for continued disbelief over a now routine event is that I certainly don't internalize myself the way the mirror reflects me. Heck, most of the time inside my happy little corner of Walter Mitty-esq self-awareness, I tend to view myself somewhere between that skinny twenty-something on my Harley in Hawaii, to a thirty-something hunka-hunka burnin' love PMO manager (depending on how far gone the bottle of wine is). The most stone-cold sober truth I can internalize is a mid-40's ballet dad (equiv. to soccer mom) - still well short of the true mark in both years and pounds.

Our species has a coping/blocking mechanism of some kind that allows Ideal Self to peacefully co-exist in some altered state of self-illusion with Actual Self. And, it extends beyond our mere psyche into the physical realm of our senses. For example, besides not "seeing" ourselves, we can't smell our own breath, normal body chemistry, or environmental odors that we are exposed to on a long-term basis. Otherwise we wouldn't have eggs readily available for breakfast. (Wait.)

Speaking of environmental smells, I am told that after a long deployment, a disembarking submarine crew has a distinct and not altogether pleasant bouquet about them that we could not detect. No doubt some heady elixir of stale air, sweat, man feet, ozone and turbine oil that probably isn't going to make the Paul Sebastian men's fragrance list. I bet it's still nowhere near as bad as a chicken farm in August. (Now.)

But I digress…

The point is that it is very difficult for individuals (thus, organizations made up of individuals) to accurately reflect on their true selves as they outwardly appear to others. The good news is this mechanism keeps suicide rates to an acceptable level; the bad news is it keeps organizations from truly understanding their culture, maturity, strengths and issues. I can't even begin to tell you the number of organizations that have self-described their process maturity as very sophisticated, only to find out that their idea of sophistication was employing Excel and Power Point to the limits of their project management capabilities.

The other bad news is that you occasionally get old guys in a bar acting like they are a hunka-hunka burnin' thirty-something love — thank goodness for cougars who think they are still cheerleaders or prom queens, or there would be chaos.

So. Appreciate the insights provided by your 360-degree performance evaluations on a personal level, and take the time on a regular basis to get an objective, outside assessment of your organization. And try to suspend your inner perspectives on both yourself and your operations long enough to find some valuable truth in both of them.