Focus Without the Whole Picture

Why "what you focus on will grow" is dangerous advice without understanding what the focus is directed at

"What you focus on will grow" is a phrase that recurs in leadership literature, coaching, and strategy discourse. It sounds right, and most of the time it is, because directing attention is one prerequisite for effective action.

But the phrase contains an assumption: that you know what to focus on. That you have a sufficient understanding of the whole before you choose your focus. But what if you do not?

Focus Is a Choice, and Choice Requires Context

Kahneman (2011) described the limits of human attention in his research: we see what we focus on, and everything else fades into the background. He called this the WYSIATI phenomenon (what you see is all there is): what we see feels like the whole truth. We do not actively notice what we are missing.

In an organization, this means that when something is named as a development priority, it begins to feel like the most important thing. If, for example, a pulse survey shows dissatisfaction with managers' communication skills, the focus is directed at communication skills. Training programs may be launched, and communication-related results may improve.

But what if the root cause is structural? For instance, if decision-making is so tightly centralized that there is no space for communication skills to be put to use? In that case, the focus strengthens something that looks meaningful but does not solve the actual problem, and the symptom is treated rather than the root cause.

The reason: the whole picture was not understood before the focus was chosen.

The Whole Phenomenon First, Details Second

Phenomenologically speaking, understanding a phenomenon begins by making it visible as a whole before it is broken into parts. Husserl (1900/1901) spoke of returning "to the things themselves" (zu den Sachen selbst): before interpretation, before categorization, before focusing. Although Husserl was not speaking about organizations, the principle is applicable: first, one looks at what is actually going on.

In an organizational context, this translates into a simple but surprisingly rarely followed principle, particularly in people development initiatives: before deciding what to focus on, one needs to be at least somewhat aware of what the whole picture looks like and how different elements relate to one another. Recognizing the whole phenomenon is not about quantifying everything, but about at least attempting to form a sufficiently broad picture of a complex whole.

When a team decides to develop "psychological safety," that is already a focus choice. But has the team first considered what larger phenomenon psychological safety is part of? How it connects to leadership structures, decision-making models, the team's history, and the organization's power dynamics? If not, the focus may be directed at something correctly named but incorrectly understood.

Self-Efficacy and the Importance of an Honest Mirror

At this point, Bandura's (1997) self-efficacy theory adds an important dimension.

Bandura showed that a person's belief in their own capability (self-efficacy) is not a static trait but is shaped by four sources: processing of one's own experiences, observing others' performance, social persuasion, and interpretation of physiological states. Of these, processing one's own experiences is the most powerful. However, research has shown that for overconfident individuals, the relationship between self-efficacy and performance can turn negative: high confidence leads to underestimation of required resources and weaker performance (Vancouver, Thompson & Williams, 2001; Vancouver & Kendall, 2006; Moores & Chang, 2009).

But the quality of processing depends critically on what is being processed. If a person evaluates their own development without a realistic mirror, they build self-efficacy on selective observation. "I have grown as a leader" may be based on remembering successful situations and forgetting unsuccessful ones. Or on the fact that no one has offered honest feedback.

When this is combined with the focus phenomenon, a self-reinforcing cycle emerges: the organization focuses on something, measures the focused area, gets positive results, and experiences success. Self-efficacy grows. The experience reinforces the belief that things are on the right track. But if the whole picture was missing from the start, this self-efficacy is based on partial truth, or perhaps no truth at all.

Over time, growth in self-efficacy that is not grounded in reality distorts both the individual's self-image and the organization's understanding of its own capability. It does not produce lasting results, because it is based on an incomplete picture of what actually changed and why.

An honest mirror is critical here. Self-efficacy strengthens in a healthy way when feedback is truthful: when success is real and when failure is recognized and addressed. Without an honest mirror, self-evaluation easily becomes selective and may gradually reinforce self-deception.

Recognition Is the First Step

From the perspective of social constructionism (Berger & Luckmann, 1966), reality is built in social processes. When a group together first recognizes and then names a phenomenon and its parts, the phenomenon begins to exist in shared reality in a new way. Recognition and naming in practice often function as the first intervention: they direct attention, create shared language, and enable collective examination.

But recognition requires that one first pauses to look at the whole. If one moves too quickly to naming and details, the tendency is to focus on what is most visible.

In practice, this means that before an organization decides what to develop, it benefits from having a process in which the whole phenomenon is recognized together: what is involved, what affects what, what do we know and what do we not know. This process is often the most valuable part of the entire development initiative, because it forces a broader view than the most obvious aspects alone. This way, the risk of important factors remaining in blind spots can be reduced.

Before Focus, the Whole Picture

"What you focus on will grow" is true. And precisely because of that, the focus decision is so consequential. If the focus is directed at the right thing for the right reason, the change will also target what is most essential to change. But if the focus is misdirected, based perhaps on an understanding formed from an incomplete whole picture, the change may be superficial and self-efficacy and confidence may be built on illusion.

So: before details, naming. And before naming, the whole picture. And this requires a conscious decision to perhaps proceed a little differently than before.

evaluoi.ai helps organizations do exactly this: recognize the whole phenomenon before moving to details and build a measurement framework that examines things from sufficiently multiple perspectives.

References

Bandura, A. (1997). Self-efficacy: The exercise of control. W. H. Freeman.

Berger, P. L., & Luckmann, T. (1966). The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge. Doubleday.

Husserl, E. (1900/1901). Logische Untersuchungen [Logical Investigations]. Halle: Max Niemeyer.

Kahneman, D. (2011). Thinking, Fast and Slow. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Moores, T. T., & Chang, J. C.-J. (2009). Self-efficacy, overconfidence, and the negative effect on subsequent performance: A field study. Information & Management, 46(2), 69–76.

Vancouver, J. B., & Kendall, L. N. (2006). When self-efficacy negatively relates to motivation and performance in a learning context. Journal of Applied Psychology, 91(5), 1146–1153.

Vancouver, J. B., Thompson, C. M., & Williams, A. A. (2001). The changing signs in the relationships among self-efficacy, personal goals, and performance. Journal of Applied Psychology, 86(4), 605–620.