Day 47 of The 100 Day Project: The Hidden Leadership Skill—Noticing What Others Miss
Avil Beckford 
Discover how leaders can avoid blind spots, decide better, and build ethical organizations by mastering the power of noticing
In leadership, where decisions must be made quickly and confidently, it’s easy to overlook what’s right in front of you. Yet The Power of Noticing by Max Bazerman shows us that great leaders don’t just act on the information they’re given. They question it, analyze what’s missing, and investigate what others cannot see.
Bazerman, a behavioral economist and professor at Harvard Business School, teaches you that leadership is not only about deciding. It’s also about noticing the signals that others ignore. He offers a powerful argument. If you develop the habit of noticing, you can prevent disasters, make better decisions, and create more ethical and effective organizations.
Why Noticing Matters
Leadership failures often stem not from a lack of information, but from ignoring or overlooking critical details. Bazerman walks readers through high-profile tragedies like the Challenger disaster, Hurricane Katrina, and the BP oil spill. The intent is not to rehash history, but to show how preventable these events were if decision makers had paid closer attention to early warning signs.
With the Challenger, engineers raised concerns about launching in cold weather, but their data was brushed aside. A deeper look would have revealed that all successful launches occurred when temperatures were above 65°F. Yet decision makers focused only on surface data, ignoring the glaring anomaly, launching at 40°F meant there was over a 99% chance of failure.
Bazerman’s point is clear. When leaders cannot notice, they don’t just miss opportunities. They put lives, livelihoods, and organizations at risk.
Barriers to Noticing
Why don’t we notice? Bazerman outlines several psychological and systemic reasons:
1. Inattentional Blindness: This occurs when you focus so intently on one thing that you become blind to other, often more important, elements in our environment. Think of the famous gorilla experiment. Most participants completely miss a person in a gorilla suit walking across the screen because they’re too busy counting basketball passes. In leadership, this same blindness can lead to poor decisions if you're too focused on the obvious.
2. Bounded Awareness: Closely tied to inattentional blindness. This refers to the systematic ways your attention is limited. You fail to consider what didn’t happen or what’s not being said, both of which can offer powerful insights.
3. Motivated Blindness: This happens when it's in your self-interest not to notice. For example, in Major League Baseball, officials turned a blind eye to steroid use because star players helped win games and sell tickets. In organizations, this same bias can lead to ethical lapses or ignored red flags.
4. Overconfidence: Leaders often trust their gut or previous successes too much, leading them to ignore data that contradicts their beliefs. Bazerman notes that many corporate fraud cases, like Enron or Tyco, began not with bad intentions but with overconfident executives ignoring warning signs.
5. Misdirection: Just like magicians and salespeople, people can manipulate your attention. To avoid being misled, leaders must clarify their objectives, define criteria, and stay focused despite persuasive distractions.
From Noticing to Action
Noticing isn’t just passive observation. It’s an intentional skill leaders must practice. Bazerman suggests using System 2 thinking, a slower, more deliberate decision-making approach, as described in Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking, Fast and Slow. While System 1 is quick and instinctual, System 2 forces you to pause, reflect, and ask questions like:
What information do I wish I had?
What’s missing from this picture?
What would an outsider see that I might be missing?
This shift in mindset can help leaders make more informed, ethical, and sustainable decisions.
Traits of a First-Class Noticer
Bazerman defines first-class noticers as individuals who:
Pay attention to their surroundings and to anomalies
Question what others take for granted
See the gaps in information
Resist being misled by overconfidence or personal biases
Maintain high ethical standards
Learn from their mistakes
Most importantly, first-class noticers will ask difficult questions, even when doing so makes others uncomfortable. They look beyond the surface and use their noticing to influence systems and culture.
Creating a Culture of Noticing
Noticing isn’t just a personal skill. It’s an organizational asset. To build a culture of noticing, leaders must:
Take an outsider’s view on key decisions
Audit processes that inhibit transparency or awareness
Create systems where employees are encouraged to speak up
Reward ethical decision-making, even when it challenges authority
Promote psychological safety so people share concerns
Organizations that prioritize noticing are better prepared for change, disruption, and ethical leadership.
Daily Practice: What Are You Missing?
Today, take a few minutes to practice the art of noticing. Ask yourself:
What assumptions am I making?
What’s not being said in this meeting?
Is there a gap between what I see and what I should be seeing?
Challenge yourself to slow down, adopt an outsider’s perspective, and dig deeper. This habit will make you a more strategic thinker, a more ethical leader, and a stronger decision maker.
🧠 Noticing is a leadership skill that can be practiced and sharpened. It’s not just about seeing more. It’s about seeing better.
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Categories: : Behavioral psychology, Decision-making skills, Leadership development