This document discusses the importance of noticing and situational awareness for leaders. It argues that leaders often fail to consider data outside their typical focus, leading to biases and wrong decisions. To be effective, leaders should ask themselves what additional information they need to make informed decisions. They also need to look for information others may not, and recognize predictable surprises by prioritizing threats and taking action. The most important leadership trait is being a "first class noticer" - someone intensely attentive who can recognize talents and see what others miss.

1. The Power of Noticing
What the best leaders see
Max bazerman

2. Max Bazerman is the co director
for Public leadership at the
Harvard Kennedy school and the
Strauss professor at the Harvard
Business school

3. Terrible things happen when our
leaders fail to think about data
that are outside their typical
focus.

4. We are generally more affected by
biases and that forces us to think
wrong.

5. ‘What do I wish I knew’ and ‘what
additional information would help
me to an informed decision’ are
two questions every leader should
ask.

6. We limit our analysis to what is
easily available rather than asking
what data would best answer the
question.

7. People can miss seeing the
obvious visually, this is called
inattentional blindness.

8. Noticing information that others
do not often involves breaking
boundaries, rules and barriers that
need to be broken

9. When we have a vested self
interest, we get to a bias and
hence we cannot take the right
decision

10. Leaders do not notice when they
are obsessed with other issues,
and other people work hard to
keep them from noticing

11. Leadership comes with
responsibilities. A critical one is
noticing the outlying evidence. It
is the job of the leader to ask for
the information that’s not in the
room.

12. Trust, cynicism or thinking one
step ahead? It depends on
whether you want to trust or be
cynical, this depends on how you
see one step ahead.

13. Your goal as a leader should be to
understand the strategic behavior
of others without destroying
opportunities or trust building.

14. One skill of successful leaders is
that they prevent predictable
surprises.

15. A predictable surprise occurs
when the organization has all the
information needed but leaders
fail to act and prevent the
inevitable.

16. Acting to prevent predictable
surprises :
a. Recognize the threat
prioritize the threat
c. Mobilize action

17. The most important leadership
trait is to be a ‘first class noticer’.

18. A first class noticer is someone
with a good eye for ‘human
behavior’. First class noticers are
intensely attentive, they recognize
talent and see what others miss.

19. Try to remember a crisis that
surprised you or your
organization. Most predictable
response would be ‘ why didn’t
we see that coming?’

20. Your response to a surprise would be
• No one could have predicted it
• The odds of this happening were so low that it
didn’t seem worthy of attention
• It wasn’t my job to read the warning signals
• There are so many possible crisis at any point,
that we missed it.

21. Your response should have been
• I didn’t examine the threats confronting our
company
• I didn’t think about how other parties could
affect our organization
• I didn’t ask others what data we were missing
• I didn’t search hard enough for more options
for us to consider

22. Noticing is easy for outsiders to
your system

23. Insiders tend to view a situation as
unique while outsiders present a
more balanced, generalized view.

24. Organizations institute systems
that promote what their
employees notice.

25. Employees often have the power
to notice but are constrained by
the culture to speak up.