I’ve discovered something uncomfortable about myself over the years: whenever I feel overwhelmed, I start thinking in bigger and bigger pictures. It looks smart. It sounds strategic. And it reliably stops me from doing anything useful. It took me far too long to understand that the big picture is often the most sophisticated form of avoidance.
And, many things look complicated from the wrong distance. Strategy decks, operating models, “transformations” with names that try too hard. We all admire the big picture because it feels important. But, it is usually where progress goes to die.
In practice, almost everything becomes simple the moment you break it down into the smallest workable piece. Not easy, but simple. “Easy” is a matter of effort. “Simple” is a matter of action.
The big question: Why do we do this? Why do we stare at the mountain and freeze, rather than looking at the path and walking?
The Biology of Paralysis
It turns out our brains are structurally hostile to grand abstractions. We aren’t freezing because we lack discipline. We are freezing because we are fighting multiple cognitive mechanisms that conspire against “Big Picture” thinking.
First, we fall victim to the Planning Fallacy. As described by Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, this is our tendency to underestimate the time and friction required for a future task. When we view a project from a high altitude, we see the destination, but our brains glaze over the terrain. We plan for the outcome, not the obstacle.
Second, we trigger Cognitive Load Theory. Educational psychologist John Sweller proved that our working memory is a bucket with a finite capacity. When we try to hold a massive, multi-year transformation strategy in our heads all at once, the bucket overflows. The “complexity” we feel is actually just cognitive congestion.
Finally, and most fatally, there is Construal Level Theory (CLT). Proposed by social psychologists Yaacov Trope and Nira Liberman, CLT suggests that distance changes the way we process information. When a goal is far away, we think in the abstract (the “Why”). When it is close, we think in the concrete (the “How”).
The “Big Picture” often traps us in high-level construal. We become obsessed with the desirability of the outcome (the strategy, the vision, the synergy) while tending to ignoring the feasibility of the execution. We know where we want to go, but the abstraction blinds us to how to get there. We are paralyzed not because the vision is weak, but because it is so detached from the mechanics that we can no longer see the first step.
Together, these three create what I call the Granularity Gap. The often occurring systematic mismatch between the size of a problem and the size of the steps we try to take to solve it.
This isn’t a call against complexity. Complexity is real, structural, and unavoidable. It’s a call against operating at the wrong level of it. Big-picture thinking has its place. It just cannot be the place you start.
The bigger the gap, the slower the progress. And yet, many of us keep widening it by operating several levels above where action actually happens. It’s leadership by aerial photo… impressive, but useless when you’re the one holding the shovel.
The Minimum Unit of Meaningful Motion
To counter this, we have to ignore the vastness. We need a rule of reduction. I define this as the Minimum Unit of Meaningful Motion.
This is not a milestone nor a sprint. It is the absolute smallest action that creates visible progress within a short, defined window. It is the first observable unit of movement that makes the problem smaller and the next step clearer.
Teams don’t fail because they can’t solve big problems. Teams fail because they choke on the size of the bite.
And you can see this everywhere:
- “We need an AI strategy.” Great. But what is the first manual workflow worth automating this week?
- “We need to rethink our go-to-market.” Fine. But what is the next conversation you need to have with an actual customer?
- “We want to build a new culture.” Lovely. But what is one behavior you want people to practice tomorrow morning at 9:00?
The bigger the vision, the smaller the starting point has to be.
Complexity as Camouflage
If the solution is so simple, breaking things down, why do we resist it?
Because there is another psychological twist: Complexity is a social performance.
It signals sophistication. It gives cover. It creates the illusion of engagement without the discomfort of doing something that might fail. It lets us stay in motion while avoiding progress.
There is always another layer to analyze. Always another angle to explore. Complexity often becomes the ultimate camouflage for uncertainty. It allows us to trade the terrifying lack of control for the comforting illusion of analysis.
If you ever want to hide, hide behind complexity… no one will find you there.
But leadership should be the opposite and focus on activation in times of uncertainty instead of hiding behind big-picture avoidance.
The Physics of Depth
One of my favorite observations of this comes from open-water swimming.
Many people can swim comfortably along the coast or in hidden coves. But something fundamental changes if you move that same swimmer 40 kilometers offshore between Mallorca and Barcelona, over thousands of meters of depth of water.
The depth doesn’t make swimming harder. It makes it heavier. The mind starts filling in the vastness below. The unknown transforms a familiar motion into psychological weight. A lack of control caused by uncertainty leading to avoidance of action. Big pictures do the same thing to execution.
The deeper and broader the context, the more intimidating the surface-level work feels… even though the actions themselves haven’t changed.
Breaking down complexity is, hence, not only tactical but also psychological. It has to neutralize the depth, stop the mind from drowning in the “Big Picture” and bring you back to the immediate stroke, the one right in front of you.
This isn’t about pretending the world is simple… the world remains complex. It is about simplifying our response to it. Complexity is the environment, and simplification is the navigation method. You cannot control the ocean, but you can control the stroke.
The deeper the water, the more your mind fills the unknown with imagined threats. The brain overreacts to depth just as it overreacts to conceptual vastness.
If the big picture feels overwhelming, don’t admire it. Instead, close the Granularity Gap and return problems to the scale where you can actually begin to act.