681: Harvard's Cornelia Choe on How Great Leaders See Differently

Cornelia Choe explains why being right is no longer enough for leaders operating in environments of constant change. She calls the problem "perspective blindness": we may be correct about what we see while still seeing only part of the picture.

Drawing on experiences across private equity, government, nonprofits, and leadership advisory, Cornelia argues that information has become increasingly commoditized while context and judgment have become more valuable. AI can broaden our understanding and challenge our thinking, but it can also become "a very easy substitute for judgment" when leaders accept its answers without questioning them.

The discussion examines two forms of perspective blindness. Reality blindness occurs when leaders fail to get close enough to different people, ideas, and situations. Projection blindness occurs when they assume others see the world as they do. Both become increasingly consequential when different members of an organization are responding to rapidly changing realities.

Cornelia encourages leaders to move "from being an expert to the chief investigator of their company": continually seeking perspectives that challenge their assumptions, listening closely to customers and stakeholders, and questioning whether the value they have historically created still meets what people need today. Her advice for customer conversations is deliberately simple: "just zip it and listen."

AI can support the same discipline. Cornelia uses AI personas representing people who see an issue differently from her to expose blind spots and expand the range of possibilities, while continuing to triangulate those perspectives with human judgment.

Before an important decision, she recommends asking: "Who sees this differently? Why do they see this differently? What do they see? And which of my assumptions would they change?"

The goal, she argues, "is not to eliminate uncertainty," but to take a wider view before making consequential decisions.

Get Cornelia's book, The Panoramic Leader, here: https://tinyurl.com/57mkz4dw

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