If you run a business that is covered with any frequency by the media, you may face another challenge. Journalists tend to look for patterns that can be explained in a relatively small number of words. If you haven’t done the work of teasing apart what is random and what you have intentionally set in motion, you will be overly influenced by the analysis of outside observers, which is often oversimplified. When managing a company that is often in the news, as Pixar is, we must be careful not to believe our own hype. I say this knowing that it is difficult to resist, especially when we are flying high and tempted to think we have done everything right. But the truth is, I have no way of accounting for all of the factors involved in any given success, and whenever I learn more, I have to revise what I think. That’s not a weakness or a flaw. That’s reality.

WARNING: If talking with customers and employees routinely is so powerful, why do leaders stop doing it? It’s because they continue to hear the same recurring issues or praise over and over — and have to take time from their busy schedules to listen to stories that seem to have zero relevance to their businesses. However, it takes only one or two key ideas to fuel a business model. So hang in there, embrace the human aspects of these conversations, and relish the moment the light bulb goes on - it will!!

If snow melts from the edges, it behooves you to have mechanisms in place to see what is going on there. This is a prescription widely made by futurists, such as Amy Webb in her brilliant book The Signals Are Talking. And yet, when I consider how many executives I work with spend their time, getting to the edges is one of the last things on their agenda.

The problem is that there might be better ideas out there, just beyond the edge of our vision. But we accept early closure because letting go of a judgment is painful and disconcerting. To search for a new insight, one would have to put aside the comfort of being oriented and once again cast around in choppy waters for a new source of stability. There is the fear of coming up empty-handed. Plus, it is unnatural, even painful, to question our own ideas.

The person closest to the problem often has the most accurate information about it. What they tend to lack is a broader perspective. The person working on the line at McDonald’s knows how to fix a recurring problem at their restaurant better than a person merely analyzing some data. What they don’t know is how it fits into the bigger picture. They don’t know whether the problem exists everywhere, or whether the solution wold cause more harm than good if implemented globally, or how to roll the idea out to everyone.