This is Johanna Rothman's September 2025 Pragmatic Manager newsletter. The Unsubscribe link is at the bottom of this email.
Humans excel at seeing problem signals—the signs that we have a problem. However, we often have blind spots about the root causes of those problems. Our beliefs and/or insufficient or irrelevant data reinforce those blind spots.
That's why we repeat the same problems. In the words of Paul Batalden, we create a system that is perfectly designed to get the results it gets.
Regardless of the system's usefulness, our blind spots maintain the current system.
Some of our systems are often useful, such as a system that reinforces collaborative work, limited and iterative planning, and focused cross-functional teams that optimize up for an overarching goal.
However, other systems are not useful. One example of a useless system is one that increases multitasking.
How Multitasking Creates a Useless System
One of my trusted advisor clients, Ron, is addicted to multitasking. I've explained the flow metrics. Ron says he understands. I've explained the consequences of tired people making mistakes and working more slowly. He says he understands—and I think he does at the team level.
However, he has beliefs about organizations and how they work that prevent him from rank-ordering the work. Instead of asking about the value of the investment, he asks his leadership team to estimate how long the work will take. Then, they create buckets of “High, Medium, and Low” projects.
Ron's organization is not finishing work, which is why he's my client. He's ready to tear his hair out.
Ron's beliefs about how effective organizations work create his blind spots. Those limit his problem-solving capabilities. I asked him to tell me the story of how he set the leadership team's goals and how he compensated that leadership team.
Ron's Story of the Senior Leadership Team Compensation
Ron does not have a single VP of Engineering. Instead, there are VPs for Platform, Middleware, UX, and Quality. Add in the Product, Marketing Communications, and Customer Success VPs, and he has a seven-person leadership team.
Ron claimed he was using OKRs (Objectives and Key Results). But instead of one single OKR for the organization, each VP had their own, individual, and independent objective. Those objectives were sometimes at odds with each other. (There was no alignment on the major outcomes. I suspected that because he only prioritized, not ranked, the projects.)
Here are all the outcomes Ron wanted this quarter:
- Customer Success needed to decrease ticket closing time because customers complained about too many problems.
- Platform needed to upgrade the current architecture to deal with infrastructure issues, not to fix defects in the current product.
- Middleware needed to enable six new payment options, not to fix defects in the current product.
- Quality was supposed to decrease the number of reported defects.
- … and more, one objective for each VP.
Any one of these objectives would have been fine for the organization for a given quarter. But there was no way all of these independent objectives could create a harmonic whole. Worse, these objectives are an excellent example of Goodheart's Law: “When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.”
Ron believed that every VP needed their unique objective. That belief created his blind spots that prevented him from fixing the problem. I created a purposefully incomplete connection circle to show him how his thinking created his reality of too much multitasking.
How Connection Circles Work to Show the Blind Spots
The image at the top of this post is a simplified connection circle. It does not show all the possible interactions, just the initial problems I saw. That was enough for me to discuss the problems with Ron. Here's how I explained the image to Ron:
- Individual management goals reduce how managers assign people to projects. Each leader optimizes for their individual objective, not the greater good. That reduces the chance these managers will assign full teams to one—and only one—project. Instead, the managers say they “try” to assign teams, but also assign some people individually across several projects. That creates multitasking throughout the organization. The people, teams, and managers all multitask.
- Individual management goals reduce leadership team alignment. The leadership team does not focus “up” to the organization. They optimize down, for their specific goal.
- Aligned leadership teams can increase customer satisfaction and improve employee morale because everyone focuses on the same few things. This organization has lower morale because everyone is spread so thin across projects.
- However, without that team-based alignment, the teams can't fix or innovate on the product “fast enough.” That reduces both customer satisfaction and morale.
Ron said, “Oh, now I get why you keep going on about the flow metrics. But I don't know what else to do.”
How Things Got This Way
That's when I asked Ron why he set individual goals for his leadership team. When Ron first became a senior manager, he managed a small organization. There were only three people on his leadership team: VP Engineering, VP Customer Success, and the VP of Marketing, all focused on one—and only one—product. They could have individual goals because they all worked for the betterment of this one product.
Those VPs collaborated, optimizing up for the product and the organization.
Fast forward to today. The organization now has several hundred people, six major products, and a pile of shortcuts in the products that made sense at the time. However, Ron is still managing as if he's managing that one-product small organization.
His system is no longer useful. His blind spots prevented him from seeing where his system was useless.
Is there ever a time for individual goals? Sure, as long as they are personal goals. That's where a person's personal improvement can help increase the capacity of other people. But not individual organizational goals. Those rarely make sense.
Notice Your Blind Spots
Everyone can see some of the signals from a given problem. However, the more blind spots we have, the less likely we can see the system that creates these problems. That means we continue to use a system that is designed to reinforce those blind spots.
Instead, systems thinking tools, such as the Connection Circles here, help us see the consequences of our blind spots. That allows us to then design a useful system. Ron is still experimenting and seeing how useful he—and his leadership team—can make their updated system.
Consider other systems thinking tools to assess your systems, especially if you fear you have blind spots. I've already written about Force Field Analysis. You can see an example of a Causal Loop Diagram in the Flow Metrics newsletter. Systems thinking tools can expose our various blind spots and help us see alternatives that allow us to change the system. (Let me know if you would like a newsletter about Causal Loop Diagrams.)
Read More:
This newsletter touches on several of my books:
- The Modern Management Made Easy books, especially Practical Ways to Lead an Innovative Organization.
- Manage Your Project Portfolio: Increase Your Capacity and Finish More Projects
- Successful Independent Consulting: Relationships That Focus on Mutual Benefit
Learn With Johanna
My cover people are working on the print cover for Effective Public Speaking. After this, I'll finish the back cover, get the proofs, and offer my Kickstarter. I'll send you the link so you can decide if you want to back it. (I thought I would be able to send you the Kickstarter link today. No. I am still having trouble with images. I will send a note out when I have the Kickstarter link.)
If you are part of the agile community, consider checking out The Agile Network. Also, don’t miss out on discounted membership options. Use Discount Code: ROTHMANPMC33 to get 33% OFF all memberships.
Links of Interest
New to the newsletter? See previous issues. (I post these newsletters to my YouTube Channel a few days after I send them.)
Here are other links you might find useful:
- Managing Product Development Blog. (Yes, I offer an RSS feed so you can read everything in a newsreader.)
- Create an Adaptable Life Blog to see the weekly question of the week.
- My Books. You can also buy my self-published ebooks and audiobooks on my store.
- My Workshops
- Johanna’s Fiction
See you next month,
Johanna
© 2025 Johanna Rothman
Pragmatic Manager: Vol 22, #9, ISSN: 2164-1196