The Forest for the Trees
You know the old adage, “you can’t see the forest for the trees”. This little nugget seems a pretty simple adage and yet it surprises me how often people get stuck staring at individual trees while failing to see the overall shape the forest is in. With the ongoing financial melt down mess, I find myself thinking about this all the time now. There are tree people and forest people and sometimes people blessed with a great ability to see both at the same time. I have to admit that I tend to be more of a forest person with lesser tree staring capability. But this financial mess our country and now, the world is in has me mulling over the idea that we often hand over our preciously earned dollars to people much more willing to stare at trees than those who periscope up and check to see the condition of the whole forest. (Think: trees – short term; forest – long term.)
I sold real estate in the late 90’s to 2004 in Sacramento, California when it was a raucous time in real estate; crazy multiple offers and lots of money to be made. A favorite lender of mine and I would worry about the various loan programs being offered and we would wonder at the sustainability of it all. How was it possible that people could get sizeable high risk loans for homes without producing proof of income and without anyone ever seeing a tax return? We had clients who wanted to see properties in neighborhoods of mostly new construction where people were buying homes with no money down and even 110 per cent financing! We tried to discourage them by explaining that if the majority of the neighborhood was being bought by people who had no money to put down on a property, and presumably no money to take care of the properties, where did they see those properties heading in 5 years? Not to mention that most, if not all, of those loans were adjustable with big jumps coming in future mortgage payments. We believed that the foreclosure market would be back in full force in the not too distant future. Many in the real estate community felt that we were unduly negative. It’s not like we were soothsayers or anything but this was not hard to see coming, truly.
Now you can’t open a newspaper or turn on a TV without people fussing and pointing fingers on how it all happened. My question is where were all these people while it was happening; these so called experts, the credible people we turn to for information. Me thinks they were staring at a whole lot of profitable trees. Paul Krugman of the New York Times sent up warnings and seemed to get it right as well as a few others but most of the people you’re hearing from today were AWOL during ‘the bubble’ . Collectively, we stand staring at the trees until they start to come down upon us and then we scatter fast up the mountains and begin to see the whole forest a little more clearly. Turns out, some fungus has been gorging itself on trees.
Lessons learned? The jury is still out but it is imperative that people learn to always ask about the unintended consequences of the policies, choices, solutions and answers they come up with. Business leaders, politicians, and individuals need to be much more willing to take an investigative look at the big picture and try to discern where they are heading and where they are taking us. It’s fun to live in the moment and I, as much as anyone, know all too well how much fun that is. People knock clichés but clichés can be messengers; “Play now, pay later”; “what goes up must come down”; and the ever popular “save for a rainy day.” And now, it’s starting to pour.
One of my jobs as a coach is to help people check and recheck their ideas and solutions through different lenses so they try and offset unintended consequences as much as possible. It’s an imperfect world but better to try to anticipate than forge ahead without picking ideas and solutions apart. Pick a headline, almost any headline, and think about how the big picture was missing. The Iraq War, Governor Spitzer, the current election process all comes to mind. And just because I work with people in their businesses on unintended consequences and since we all live in the bubbles of our own making, I need constant prodding to pay attention as well. It would be useful for us all to try to see the forest and the trees.
Tania Garcia Fowler
Interplay Coaching
July 2008
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