One of the biggest misconceptions in business is that poor performance is always the result of poor decision making.
In reality, I often see the opposite.
Businesses make sensible decisions every day. Decisions based on experience, data and good intentions. The challenge is that those decisions are often made from the perspective of a single department, without fully understanding the impact they may have elsewhere in the organisation.
The decision itself isn’t necessarily wrong.
The problem is that nobody can see the whole picture.
A Decision That Makes Perfect Sense
Imagine a Finance Director reviewing working capital.
Inventory has increased over the last six months, cash flow is becoming tighter and there is pressure to release cash back into the business.
Reducing inventory seems like an obvious decision.
At exactly the same time, Operations has experienced increasing customer demand and knows that supplier lead times have become less predictable. Their priority is maintaining service levels and avoiding production delays.
Meanwhile, Supply Chain has been dealing with suppliers who are struggling with capacity and extending lead times, making inventory an important part of managing operational risk.
Every one of those decisions makes sense.
The challenge is that each person is looking at the same business through a different lens.
Looking At One Piece Of The Puzzle
This is something I discussed recently in The Missing Piece Between Finance, Operations and Supply Chain.
Every function develops expertise in its own area.
Finance understands financial performance.
Operations understands operational performance.
Supply Chain understands supplier risk and inventory.
Sales understands customer demand.
None of these perspectives are wrong.
The difficulty comes when decisions are made without understanding how they influence the rest of the business.
Cause And Effect
Businesses rarely experience problems in isolation.
Reducing inventory may improve cash flow today but create shortages next month.
Buying additional stock may improve customer service but reduce available working capital.
Changing supplier may reduce cost but increase operational risk.
Winning a large customer order might increase revenue whilst placing pressure on production capacity and supplier performance.
Every business decision creates consequences somewhere else.
Understanding those consequences is often more important than the original decision itself.
Why More Reports Aren’t The Answer
Many organisations respond by creating more reports.
More dashboards.
More spreadsheets.
More meetings.
Most businesses don’t need more information. They need better connected information.
This is something we explored further in ERP System? Still Can’t See The Whole Picture?
Most organisations already have the data.
The challenge is understanding the relationships between it.
Seeing The Bigger Picture
When business leaders can see how Finance, Operations, Supply Chain, Growth and Sustainability interact, conversations change.
Departments stop defending individual KPIs.
Instead, they begin discussing the wider business impact.
The conversation moves from:
“What’s best for my department?”
to
“What’s best for the business?”
That shift is often where meaningful improvement begins.
Can You See The Bigger Picture?
The best businesses don’t make perfect decisions.
They make informed decisions.
They understand that every decision has consequences across the wider organisation, and they use better visibility to understand those consequences before they happen.
That is exactly what our See The Bigger Picture approach is designed to support.
Most businesses already have the pieces.
The challenge is understanding how they fit together.
Why SME Leaders Can’t See the Whole Picture
Can you see the bigger picture?