Seeing the wood for the trees

Can you be so close to something that you stop seeing it?

A process you know inside out. A problem you’ve spent months trying to solve. An assumption so familiar you no longer notice you’re making it.

You can explain every detail, yet miss something obvious about the whole.

Take a moment to look at the image accompanying this post.

Can you see what it is?

And now a slightly different question: are you sure it makes sense?

Familiar enough to stop looking

There is nothing particularly remarkable about the subject. Wooden furniture. A table. Chairs. An ordinary room.

We recognise enough to give it a name, and that name offers a comfortable explanation. We have seen chairs before. We know how tables work. There seems little reason to investigate further.

But try following one of the horizontal edges. Which object does it belong to? Is that upright part of the chair nearest you, or something behind it? Are those surfaces on the same plane, or have the camera angle and their alignment encouraged you to connect them?

The photograph is tilted. Some details are sharp; others slip into blur. Familiar shapes overlap in ways that make their relationships harder to judge.

Perhaps your first impression was right. Perhaps it was only partly right.

The interesting moment is when you begin to doubt it.

What do we do with the awkward angle?

Once we have decided what we are looking at, it is tempting to explain everything else through that decision.

That edge must belong to the table. That leg must connect to the seat. The angle looks strange, but presumably that is just the perspective.

Each explanation is plausible. Together, they can allow us to preserve our original interpretation without checking whether it still holds.

I recognise that temptation in project work.

We inherit a description of how a process operates, what a system does or why a problem exists. It gives us somewhere to start. Over time, we build plans, reports and decisions around it.

Then something doesn’t quite fit.

A record contradicts another record. Someone describes a workaround that doesn’t appear in the process map. A supposedly straightforward change turns out to depend on several people quietly joining things together.

We can investigate what that tells us about the whole picture. Or we can explain it away as an exception and carry on.

The second option becomes particularly attractive when we have already invested considerable effort in the first explanation.

Detail can become a hiding place

Being close to the work is valuable. We need the people who understand its history, its dependencies and the reasons apparently simple changes can be difficult.

But familiarity can also make assumptions harder to spot.

We know where the gaps are, so we mentally bridge them. We understand what a field is supposed to mean, so we overlook what it actually contains. We know who to call when something fails, so the process continues to look functional.

Like the furniture in the image, separate things can appear connected because our viewpoint supplies the connection.

Look closely at the wood grain and you will find real detail. But knowing more about that grain will not necessarily tell you which chair you are looking at.

That distinction matters when we are trying to solve a problem. We can produce increasingly detailed answers while leaving our original understanding of the problem unexamined.

Changing the viewpoint

Seeing the wood for the trees requires us to consider how the details relate to one another.

And did you wonder about the odd spacing in this blog? Did you think it a mistake and ignore it?

Sometimes questioning means following a single case through an entire process. Sometimes it means asking someone unfamiliar with the work to describe what they see. Sometimes it means returning to a question we thought had been settled:

What evidence would make us change our minds?

A fresh perspective may reveal a misunderstanding. It may also confirm that our first interpretation was sound. Either outcome is useful if we have genuinely tested it.

So look at the image again.

Which connections can you actually see, and which have you supplied?

Are the angles wrong, or are you viewing them from an awkward position?

Have you found an explanation that fits the picture—or fitted the picture to your explanation?

And where, in your own work, might you be doing the same?