The Dying Art of Observation
There’s an old song lyric that one of my clients reminded me of recently: “Stand in the place where you are.”
I’m not sure R.E.M. meant that as management advice, but it might be exactly what leaders need right now.
Before we set goals, launch initiatives, redesign processes, ask people to perform differently, or build agents to do the work for us, we have to stand close enough to the work to see what is actually happening.
Not the dashboard version.
Not the conference room version.
Not the hearsay version filtered through three layers of other people.
The real thing, as it is today.
Because when our understanding of current reality is thin, everything built on top of it gets shaky: the goals, the next steps, the conclusions, and eventually, the trust.
Goals need ground beneath them
Leaders are often under pressure to move quickly to set and pursue the next goal, or make the next high-stakes decision.
Reduce lead time.
Launch the new product version.
Increase employee ownership.
Become more customer-centric.
These may all be worthy aims. But without a clear understanding of what is currently happening, they are not yet useful targets. They are vague aspirations.
Goals cannot be plucked out of thin air. A good goal has a relationship to reality.
The current condition tells us what we are really working with: the steps the work typically takes, where it stalls or breaks down, what causes deviation from the expected path, and what results the process is actually producing. We can also gain useful insight into where the system depends on heroics, where workarounds have developed, and what the emotional reality of the team looks like as they attempt to do the work.
Without that understanding, we risk setting goals or making decisions that sound good in a conference room but collapse on contact with the actual system.
We might ask for speed when the real issue is rework.
We might ask for accountability when the real issue is unclear priorities.
We might ask for better training when the real issue is that no one has defined what the process is supposed to produce.
This is why observation is not a nice-to-have leadership habit. It is a foundational skill, and one that is increasingly fading out of fashion, and out of practice.
Your first management tool is your own eyes
Taiichi Ohno, one of the key architects of the Toyota Production System, was famous for a teaching practice now often called the “Ohno Circle.” He would draw a chalk circle on the shop floor, place a manager or engineer inside it, and tell them to watch the work.
Not fix.
Not question.
Not explain.
Just watch.
He would return later and ask what they saw. If they had only noticed the obvious, they had not watched long enough.
I think of this as one of the earliest forms of a management system. Not a report. Not a meeting. Not a dashboard. Rather, a disciplined routine for connecting leaders’ attention to the reality of the work.
That may sound simple. It is not.
Most of us are trained to move quickly from problem to answer. We see a delay and want to fix it. We hear frustration and want to explain it. We notice variation and want to standardize it. We spot a mistake and want to correct it. We are so quick to tell the story, fill in the gaps, and prod it along toward a happy ending that we make up a work of fiction.
But the first discipline of management is to see things as they really are.
To notice before explaining.
To ask before solving.
To understand the conditions before judging the behavior.
Why this is harder now
This kind of unbiased observation has always required discipline. But it is becoming even harder as our workplaces change.
As organizations grow, leaders get farther away from the value-creating work. They see more layers, more handoffs, more reports, and less of the frontline reality.
As work becomes more digital, the process can disappear behind screens. All we see are glimpses of milestones achieved, questions raised, tickets moved, or tasks marked complete.
The proliferation of remote work has added another layer between leaders and reality. Many leaders lost the ability to casually notice where people were stuck, which questions kept resurfacing, or which decisions required heroic effort. The Teams call is a poor substitute for being able to see the half-finished work, overhear the repeated confusion, or notice the complicated workaround that everyone has accepted as normal.
And now AI adds a new temptation: we never have to admit the limits of our knowledge, because we can just ask for an answer.
But abstraction is not understanding.
A flimsy grasp of current reality leads to flimsy goals. Flimsy goals lead to flimsy problem-solving. And flimsy problem-solving eventually drifts away from what customers and employees actually need. Then we wonder why no one wants what we are selling.
This does not mean leaders need to hover, micromanage, or drag everyone back into the office. It means we need to rebuild the muscle of direct observation in ways that fit the work we actually do now.
What to look for when you observe
When you go see the work, do not just look for “waste.” Look for the conditions shaping behavior.
Look for flow. Where does work start, stop, wait, loop back, or pile up?
Look for friction. Where is the work harder than it needs to be? Where are people searching, clarifying, re-entering, expediting, or checking because the process does not reliably support them?
Look for decisions. What judgment calls are people making? What gets escalated? What criteria are they using? Where is intent unclear?
Look for workarounds. Side spreadsheets. Shadow trackers. Sticky notes. These are often signs that people have adapted intelligently to a system that is not giving them what they need.
Look for learning gaps. Where are people expected to know things they were never taught? Where does success depend on tacit knowledge, tribal memory, proximity to the most experienced person, or worse, an out-of-context AI-generated answer?
And look for emotional signals. Frustration. Hesitation. Resignation. Pride in firefighting.
Those signals are data, too.
Go see, but don’t go hunting
Observation is not inspection in disguise.
If people experience your presence as a search for what is wrong or who is at fault, they will protect themselves. They will clean up the story before you can learn from it.
The mindset is curiosity, not judgment. You are there to understand the conditions, not evaluate the person.
That means you may need to say what you are doing out loud:
“I’m trying to better understand how this process actually works today.”
“I’m not here to audit you. I’m looking for what makes the work harder than it needs to be.”
“I’d like to watch for a bit, then ask what I’m missing.”
Then watch long enough for your assumptions to get uncomfortable.
The first thing you notice may be superficial. The second thing may confirm what you already believed. But if you stay with it, you may begin to see deeper patterns: unclear handoffs, missing standards, needless task-switching, decision bottlenecks, workarounds everyone depends on, or policies that made sense three years ago but no longer fit the work.
That is where better leadership begins.
Try this: 20-minute current reality observation
Choose one process, handoff, meeting, customer interaction, or recurring problem.
For 20 minutes, observe without fixing.
- What is actually happening?
- Where does work wait, loop back, or require clarification?
- What does the person need to know, decide, or infer?
- What seems harder than it should be?
- What surprised me?
- What do I need to understand better before suggesting a solution?
Then ask the person doing the work:
“What gets in the way of this going smoothly?”
And:
“What do you wish leaders understood about this process?”
You may be surprised by what becomes visible.
What comes next
Observation is not the end of the work. It is the beginning of better work.
Once we see more clearly, we can ask better questions:
What problem are we actually trying to solve?
What would “better” actually look like?
What capability does the team need to build?
What decision rights need to be clearer?
What standard or support is missing?
Where would focused improvement make the biggest difference?
And this is where leadership starts to shift.
When leaders use observation to tighten control, people learn to comply.
But when leaders use observation to build shared understanding, people are more likely to contribute their thinking, name real obstacles, and own the next step.
Stand in the place where the work happens.
Watch long enough to see what is real.
Ask what people are navigating.
Notice where the system makes the right thing harder than it should be.
Then, and only then, figure out the next focus of improvement or problem-solving.
Because the better we can see reality, the better chance we have of changing it for the better.
Contact Growing Wild today to learn how stronger leadership routines can help your team see the work more clearly, solve the right problems, and build capability where it matters most.