To See Around Corners and Through Space and Time, You Need Supply-Side Empathetic Perspective

The following is adapted from Learning to Build.

In order for innovators and entrepreneurs to see around corners and see through space and time — in other words, to get an omniscient, God-like perspective that allows them to see the whole — they must have what I call “supply-side empathetic perspective.”

The benefits to such a perspective are vast. It allows you to see every situation from multiple points of view. And, it allows you to utterly understand the many perspectives that could impact your system and your product. That means, when you go back to build, you can see conflicts and problems before they arise.

Achieving supply-side empathetic perspective starts with identifying the key players. Ask yourself: who’s involved? Why are they involved? What do they do?

Internally, there are likely a multitude of roles, everything from marketing and finance to manufacturing and production surrounding your thing. Then there are external influencers, such as suppliers, customers, and partners. Each of these people occupy roles on different sides of the equation, and as a result, see differently. Innovators and entrepreneurs skilled at empathetic perspective can see the whole.

Learn to See the Whole

My education in supply-side empathetic perspective began while struggling to find an answer to a problem. The company I was working for (a car manufacturer) was having issues with their rearview mirrors. My mentor Dr. Willie Moore said, “I want you to become the molecule that becomes the plastic that then becomes the mirror.”

On the surface, it may seem like an unusual exercise, but it’s an incredibly brilliant way to gain supply-side empathetic perspective. Instead of asking, “What’s the problem? What’s the solution?”, I took a step back. I became the molecule and uncovered its journey. In doing so, I answered the critical who, what, when, where, and why, which were the first steps toward seeing the whole.

I’m the molecule. I’m made at Dow Chemicals, where they formulate me into pellets and then ship me to various plants via train. Once I arrive, I sit in the plant hopper and wait my turn. It may take days, weeks, or months, but suddenly, I get poured into a buffer that starts to heat me up.

There are different pressures and temperatures as I make my way through the machine, melding together. Then I’m placed into a mold where I sit and dry for 20 seconds. Then I get popped out, cooled for a minute before getting shaped, and placed into a box. That box goes to the assembly line at the plant where I’m then placed into a car, shipped to dealers, and bought by customers.

You Must Make Tradeoffs

Becoming your creation will help you figure out who’s involved, why they’re involved, and what they do. And not just from the perspective of the people, but also from the thing itself. It forces you to see the broader picture, which allows you to frame what’s going on and understand what to do.

Seeing this complexity quickly moves you from one problem/one solution to many problems/many solutions. You realize that you don’t have the answer, which stops you from assuming a solution and chasing after one hypothesis.

Oftentimes, when people go to design a product, they think there’s an objectively “best” way to do it because they lack empathetic perspective on the supply-side. They don’t understand the context or perspective that’s wrapped around their product or service, so they’re trying to find the absolute best way in which to build it. But there’s no such thing as a “best” way. You must make tradeoffs.

Empathetic perspective enables you to see around corners, project into the future, and therefore see the necessary tradeoffs. Without empathetic perspective, these tradeoffs become impossible.

Teach Others to See the Whole

It’s not just you as the leader who needs empathetic perspective; your people need it as well. As an innovator or entrepreneur, your people’s blind spots can cost you years in development and millions in lost revenue. They need to talk to each other in deep, meaningful ways, early and often. Most organizations don’t take the time to do this, and therefore, they lose sight of the bigger picture. They follow a process almost blindly.

The first step is to have everyone within your organization rotate: marketing needs to understand engineering; engineering needs to understand the assembly line, etc. Most people do not take the time to genuinely see things from other people’s perspectives. It’s not enough to simply talk to each other either. People need time to genuinely put themselves in each other’s shoes.

As a young, fairly green engineer, I thought I had empathetic perspective. I would walk around the plant, see the assembly-line workers, talk to the engine designers, and so on, but I wasn’t truly putting myself in their shoes. I’d listen, but I’d use that information to try to convince them of my perspective. I wanted to show them that they were wrong: “If we just did this my way, then that would work.”

That’s not empathetic perspective; it’s a direct assault type of view. A person with empathetic perspective doesn’t initiate conversation and then go head-to-head trying to convince other people to change their mind. This is about seeing things from many perspectives, seeing the conflicts, designing new ways to work, and creating a win-win for both.

People with empathetic perspective try to see where other people are coming from to understand what is going to happen. And they recognize that they might be the one who is wrong. There’s a lot of humbleness and curiosity embedded in empathetic perspective.

Develop Empathetic Perspective

There are a few ways to advance your ability to see empathetically. For example, you can pick a family member and try to understand their perspective on any topic. A great place to start is to talk to your child and uncover the progress they want to make with school or a sport. What are their goals? It’s been a long time since you were a kid, and the reality of their perspective is completely different than what you experienced.

You can also talk to a grandparent to uncover a big moment in their life. Try to empathetically understand why that moment was important. Or, the next time that you have a disagreement, make sure that you understand the situation from the other person’s perspective without judgment or attempting to change their mind.

Another great way to practice is to go to a place where you are unfamiliar, maybe a vacation in a city or country very dissimilar to where you live, and interact with people. Immersing yourself in different scenarios enables you to see empathetically.

Aside from conversing with people, you can also consider taking an improv class; playing different roles and being in different contexts helps immensely. Also, you can read a story from a different time and place, like The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and try to understand the main character’s motivations and emotions.

No matter which of these techniques you try, remember: your goal is to be an empty vessel. You are there to talk, interact, unpack, and see what they are trying to do.

Build True Alignment

Innovators and entrepreneurs skilled at empathetic perspective can see the whole internally and externally. Indeed, that’s the real value in empathetic perspective. Because it allows you to see the whole, it shows you how to build alignment, and it shows you where there are gaps in the alignment so you can work on those spaces.

If you don’t dig deeply and apply rigor, you will miss the real meaning behind what people are trying to say; people will say one thing when they mean another. Without the proper rigor, you will inadvertently apply your own perspective to other people’s words. But with it, you will be able to see around corners and see through space and time.

For more advice on how to develop empathetic perspective, you can find Learning to Build on Amazon.

Bob Moesta is a builder, teacher, entrepreneur, author, and co-founder of The Re-Wired Group, a design and development firm based in Detroit, Michigan. Early in his career, Bob received an education in building and launching new products from renowned innovators Dr. Clayton Christensen, Dr. Genichi Taguchi, Dr. W. Edwards Deming, and Dr. Willie Hobbs Moore. The worldview he gained has enabled him to work on and launch thousands of new products over the last thirty years, be the founder of ten different companies, and become a mentor to the next generation of builders and problem solvers. Bob is an adjunct lecturer at the Kellogg School at Northwestern University and a guest lecturer at Harvard Business School, and MIT’s Sloan School of Management.