What am I Missing? Find Your Problem's Most Interesting Patterns

November 3, 2022

Native American stories distinguish “mouse eyes” and “eagle eyes.” Like other tensions in cultural wisdoms, both of these perspectives are rich with possibility. Each one also comes with risks and challenges. If you make mouse eyes a habit, then you miss the rich context and long-range interactions. If you always play the eagle, you will miss glorious details of the moment.

When we are swamped by our problems, we tend to get stuck with the mouse. We face complexities of life every day. We experience a challenge or face a barrier and take the steps we believe will get us past that problem. Rarely do we step back to look at the larger patterns through the eyes of the eagle. Eagle eyes will help us understand the dynamics of our problems and see our complicity in their origins. While many mouse-level surprises are beyond our control, some of them we can see, understand, and influence from the eagle’s view.

Join Glenda Eoyang to consider how to use HSD to see from both perspectives and turn problems we can’t solve into patterns we can influence.