Which part of the beach ball do you see?
Your answer can make all the difference for your leadership team.
When I work with senior teams, one of my favorite props is a familiar summer toy: a beach ball. It’s not there to provide a fun diversion or silly team-building exercise (though it provides a great adult fidget toy); it illustrates a serious point that’s a core challenge for many of my clients: We all tend to look at problems from a limited point of view, based on our own individual experience and professional role.
How does an inflatable plastic ball drive this point home? Picture a standard beach ball with six brightly colored panels (typically blue, orange, yellow, red, green, and white). Hold it up in front of you with the air valve on the bottom, and you’ll get a clear view of one of those panels, with the others wrapping around the sides and back.
Now imagine that each colored panel is a different department or functional area, and you have a good visual representation of many leadership teams and other cross-functional groups. Each team member brings valuable experience and expertise that corresponds to their “color”—let’s say the marketing perspective is orange, finance is green, operations is blue, and so on. So, when the team encounters a challenging situation, that’s the part of the beach ball they’re likely to see. A leader who’s focused on orange might see a sliver of another color out of the corner of their eye, but primarily they see orange, and most of the other perspectives simply aren’t available.
When I share this analogy with clients, most can relate to it right away. They’ve experienced how hard it can be to align on decisions and solutions—or even on a shared understanding of a problem—when every individual is looking at the situation from a different angle. It can feel as though each team member, and each part of the organization they represent, is in their own separate world (or “silo”).
Sometimes this is perfectly fine; you need to hear from the CFO how things look from the finance point of view, and the same from marketing and operations and HR, and so on. But if you cannot work together to integrate those different perspectives, that’s bad news—both for your team and for the larger organizational system. Particularly when you’re part of the team at the top, your organization needs you to see beyond your own localized interests and concerns and to work collaboratively in service of the greater good. Each leader must be able to shift from advocating on behalf of their individual area to considering what’s best for the enterprise as a whole.
Consider just a few examples of decisions where multiple points of view are critical:
Mergers and acquisitions: Beyond the finances, what are the implications for organizational culture, structure, and ways of working?
Go-to-market strategy: How does this affect not just marketing and sales, but strategy, operations, and product areas?
Technology improvements: In addition to the impact on IT, what are the short- and long-term consequences for people and processes throughout the organization?
Even a general counsel needs to look holistically—considering what new regulations might mean from a technology, people, and revenue perspective.
What does it take to shift perspective in this way? Again, we can turn to the beach ball analogy. We started out imagining the view from the side, where we can see just one colored panel at a time. But think about what happens when we flip the ball the other way, so we’re looking at the top instead. Suddenly we can see all the colors at once, side by side. Of course, those colors have been there the whole time, but it takes a shift in perspective to make them visible.
The ability to look beyond what we usually see can make all the difference for leadership teams. Once I teach my clients the beach ball analogy, they start finding many opportunities to put it into practice: situations where high levels of risk, complexity, or interdependency call for a broader, more inclusive view that integrates the collective knowledge and expertise of all team members. Some of these “beach ball moments” emerge spontaneously, while others get intentionally built into meeting agendas whenever strategic planning or complex decision making or problem solving is required. I recently shared this concept with a team of marketing, communications, and advertising leaders that was getting bogged down in inefficiency. Much of their communication went through the leader, who kept getting multiple redundant requests for information. Customers complained that whenever they had a question or concern, they needed to talk to 2–4 different people to get it resolved. Team members weren’t sharing information or resources directly with each other—not because they didn’t want to, but because they simply didn’t think to do so. By setting aside time to “look at the top of the beach ball” and discuss overlaps in their work, they’ve improved their efficiency and reduced a lot of unnecessary frustration.
Take a moment to reflect on your own team. When do you and your colleagues tend to get locked into a single point of focus (one panel of the beach ball)? How does that affect your problem solving and decision making? How might you create a “beach ball moment,” and what difference could it make?
Unlock the Full Potential of Your Leadership Team
At Zukin Leadership, we help leaders and teams break through silos, align on critical decisions, and cultivate the strategic perspective needed to drive meaningful impact. Whether you’re looking to enhance executive team effectiveness, navigate complex organizational challenges, or build a more cohesive leadership culture, we provide tailored coaching, consulting, and immersive experiences designed to elevate your leadership and your business.
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