How do you avoid missing the big picture at work?

School was easier: the path is laid out for us and we just need to, more or less, follow it. At work, not so much. Everything is ill defined and you're sort of expected to "learn by osmosis" (by going to meetings, listening to your team chatting and then forming an understanding). I'm terrible at this and the consequence is that I don't always prioritise my effort and work well.

The obvious answer is to ask, but I'm not always aware of what I'm missing or the explanations come with loads of other lingo and assumptions about my current knowledge. After failing to understand an explanation, I feel I shouldn't ask again for fear being labelled "dumb" (after all, everybody else seems to be doing well). I also try to take notes, but after a while I just end up with a pile of disjoint pieces of information.

Has anyone felt like me? Have you found techniques and strategies to cope with this that you could share?

Or anything really. Points of view and opinions are very much appreciated as well.

Another approach is to consider the work you are assigned more deeply before you begin and understand the various different ways it could be done. Each assignment will have multiple parts or aspects and those aspects each can have more or less time spent on them to achieve various qualities. Quick, superficial breadth first vs deep depth first, etc. Getting something precise and correct vs getting something good enough, etc.

If you can understand and articulate the choices that are available to you in how the work is to be done between the various approaches- basically understanding how much time to put into what aspects to get what values or qualities- then you can form a hypothesis about what makes sense and then you can take that hypothesis to your manager. Asking them for direction on what to solve/optimize/prioritize for given 2 or 3 alternatives before getting too deep into the work is a good, valuable question. Through those answers and conversations you will more directly start to understand the qualities and outcomes that are important, and how important they are (inferring from how much time/depth should go into them).

Most times there is no single "big picture" at large organizations, rather there are many individually authored narratives that may allude to shared facts but also are highly personal and often involve hidden agendas that are held close by individual managers. All human organizations involve politics, and this is what politics is. Even organization-scale planning tools like OKRs are highly contextual and cannot be taken too literally.

For any given person, understanding the near term choices available to them in exactly how their time is spent, and what the results of those choices are in terms of qualities of outcomes, and then asking for help selecting the right outcomes, then executing on those choices, and following up if new learnings present themselves or if things are not as expected, is a good, politics-free approach.

It can be hard to do this, to not just barge ahead doing the work but to think about various ways the work could be done. Hard but worth it. This approach of understanding every situation/assignment as set of choices, is big picture thinking in disguise.

Hope that helps. Good luck.

One thing I hate about performance reviews is their perverse need to point out your weak point and suggest fixing that, disregarding whether it makes broader sense for the individual's career and whether it may undermine their strengths.

During recruitment I have been looking for big picture oriented people lately, but most of my colleagues are detail oriented and do not recognize nor appreciate it in potential hires.

The big picture is the business. Big picture thinking is being told to do X but convincing everyone that Y is better--but at the business level, not the technical level.

I think better terms than big picture people are ones that think abstractly, conceptually, or analytically. These are the folks who are good 'at naming things'. That means they understood both the business aspect of what areas to separate and iterate upon, as well as isolating technical factors that minimize code quantity and maximize flexibility. If they can do this with a minimal amount of abstract machinery/metaprogramming, that's golden.

In my opinion, some companies are just not set up to allow employees to see the big picture. For example:

> The smartest and most productive employees are given the most tasks. It can be hard to see the bigger picture when you're drowning on multiple complicated projects with no occasional breathing room to assess and reflect and make good long-term decisions.

> Information is siloed. The only communication you ever have with customers or decision makers might come strictly from your boss who might be a project manager. If they don't think that one piece of information is necessary for you to hear, you'll never come up with some amazing insights into the business. The failure could be your bosses, not yours.

> Employees are micromanaged to death. Every decision that you're not specifically authorized to make puts your job at risk. If you treat employees like children, they're not going to stick their neck out and are only going to do what they're told.