The Organization You Are Being Shown Is Not the One Being Experienced

As we move up in our careers through promotions, raises, titles, ranks, and increased responsibility, something interesting begins to happen.

The way we receive information changes.

No longer are we experiencing most problems exactly as they occur. Instead, information is filtered, focused, summarized, contextualized, rewritten, and repackaged so the bottom line is up front.

That makes sense. A CEO cannot personally investigate every issue occurring across an organization. Neither can a division president, hospital administrator, school superintendent, or military commander. Their time and attention are limited, and the people below them are expected to solve problems at their respective levels.

But something is lost in that process.

The experience of the problem.

Think about a frontline employee who encounters an issue and brings it to a supervisor. The supervisor cannot resolve it, so they bring it to a manager. The manager determines it needs additional attention and brings it to a director. The director then contextualizes the problem for an executive.

By the time it reaches the executive, four different people may have touched the information.

And every one of them has power.

Not necessarily positional power. I mean the power to influence how the next person understands the problem.

One person removes a detail they believe is irrelevant. Another emphasizes something they believe is important. Someone else changes the wording. Another adds context based on their own experience. None of them have to be dishonest or malicious. In fact, every person involved may genuinely be trying to make the information better.

But the information has still changed.

Imagine an employee tells a supervisor, "This process takes me two hours because I have to enter the same information into three different systems."

The supervisor reports that employees are experiencing inefficiencies.

The manager reports that there may be an issue with workflow.

The director reports that productivity is slightly below expectations because of system limitations.

The executive sees:

Productivity: 7% below target.

All of those statements might be technically accurate.

But only one person spent two hours entering the same information three times.

That difference matters because leaders make decisions based on the organization they can see.

And the organization they can see is increasingly constructed from reports, dashboards, meetings, metrics, briefings, and the interpretations of the people between them and the point of execution.

Consider it through a military lens.

How long has it been since a general or flag officer personally employed a new weapon system at the tactical level?

Years? Decades?

That does not mean the general has nothing valuable to contribute. Quite the opposite. They may understand strategic implications, resources, risk, sustainment, organizational priorities, and second- or third-order effects better than anyone actually operating the weapon.

But are they the best person to explain how that weapon performs on the ground?

Probably not.

For that, I want to hear from the Soldier or Marine currently carrying it.

The same principle applies to business.

A CEO may understand where the organization needs to go better than anyone else. A frontline employee may understand why a particular process is making it harder to get there.

Neither perspective replaces the other.

“Problems occur when we assume that the view from the top contains the view from the bottom.”

It doesn't.

As leaders move higher, they gain perspective, authority, and strategic visibility. At the same time, they naturally become more distant from some of the everyday friction occurring at the point of execution.

That isn't a leadership failure.

It's an organizational reality.

So perhaps the question for senior leaders isn't simply:

"What is happening in my organization?"

It is also:

"How many people did this information pass through before it reached me, and what might have been lost along the way?"

Because the organization being shown to you may be completely accurate.

It just may not be the organization your people are experiencing.