And Unknown Knows, those things we forget to bring in or consciously and subconsciously choose to overlook. I’d claim that the most influential blindspots lay there as well. I love this drawing, so beautifully captures the strange and beautiful Venn diagram it is to sense something together.
That’s a beautiful addition, Chris "unknown knows". The things we intuit but overlook or don’t bring into the room. And yes, those might be the blind spots that influence us the most.
Why do smart teams still disagree about the problem?
Product says it's a tech issue.
Leadership says it's strategy.
Finance says it's cost.
Users say it's usability.
Everyone is intelligent.
Everyone is experienced.
And yet the disagreement remains.
Why?
Because every perspective reveals something and hides something.
Recently I sketched a simple framework I call:
The Perspective Blind Spot Model.
The idea is simple.
Every role in an organization acts like a lens.
Engineers see systems.
Designers see experiences.
Leaders see strategy.
Finance sees sustainability.
Each perspective reveals part of reality.
But outside each perspective lie blind zones, things we simply cannot see from where we stand.
This is why many organizational conflicts happen.
Not because people are wrong.
But because they are seeing different slices of the same system.
The real work of leadership, facilitation, and service design is not just solving problems.
It is expanding the collective perspective by dialog.
Because when perspectives overlap:
Blind spots shrink.
Understanding grows.
And the real problem finally becomes visible.
Very often, the problem was never where we first thought it was.
Sometimes the biggest breakthrough simply comes from seeing the system differently.
Known knowns / known unknowns/ / Unknown unknowns
And Unknown Knows, those things we forget to bring in or consciously and subconsciously choose to overlook. I’d claim that the most influential blindspots lay there as well. I love this drawing, so beautifully captures the strange and beautiful Venn diagram it is to sense something together.
That’s a beautiful addition, Chris "unknown knows". The things we intuit but overlook or don’t bring into the room. And yes, those might be the blind spots that influence us the most.