A New York Times article shows this video wherein after each 'blink' a major component of the scene is changed.
When you watch the video you experience how difficult it is to discern any change after a 'blink'.
In your business small changes happen all the time.
Over the time of the video the initial scene has been replaced and you may not have noticed it.
The effect is called 'change blindness' and is a demonstration of the fickleness of vision, our strongest sense.
Perceptions provide the foundation of what we know, or, more precisely, what we think we know. We use reasoning to complete our world view. In other words: our perceptions combine with our reasoning to form our perspective.
As we have just experienced, even our strongest sense, vision, cannot provide an accurate perception.
Unfortunately reasoning is even more fickle than our senses. Most of us are unaware of the building blocks and criteria of quality reasoning and so we are unable to evaluate how well we reason. So we simply assume that we do well. As direct feedback is rare in the real world (at least at school you get your marks for exams) we remain blissfully ignorant of the consequences of our poor reasoning. And just in case we do get found out, well, then we have an arsenal of justifications at our disposition to demonstrate that given the circumstances of the moment, we did the best we could.
Reasoning also demands effort, and our brains, prefer to get away with short-cuts (heuristics), rather then going through the effort of questioning inputs and applying quality reasoning.
It is easier to simply trust our perceptions and give in to our biases than to question our perceptions and withstand our emotional pulls. But 'ease' should never be our guide for decision-making.
When we make up our mind, when we make decisions, we would do well not to fully trust our view of the world. Neither should we assume that our reasoning satisfies quality standards if we don't really know what they are.
It is impossible to be objective but we can continuously improve on how we arrive at our decisions. The reality is that most of us prefer to take a position on an issue early and then to defend it. But this is not how we make better decisions.
In order to improve hoe we decide, how we communicate more effectively, and become more creative, we need to make an effort and test our own perceptions, emotions and our reasoning. This we do best by exploring our views with other people, who have different perspectives.
We didn't notice most of the small changes in the scene in the video, and we do not notice the day-to-day changes in our organisation, but in both cases, over time, we end up with a completely different theatre than the one we started with.
The question is whether you want to be aware of these changes and their implications so that you can influence future changes, or not. If you do, then you will need to make a continuous big effort and question your perceptions and your reasoning. The best way to do this is with other people. More diversity, if properly supported by a shared communication framework, leads to more complete understanding and to more ideas.
Next time we blink, the organisations that didn't pay attention, may not be there.