The Visibility Lie
What it sounds like
“I have a clear picture of what’s happening.”
“My team keep me well informed.”
“We have good visibility across the business.”
“I know my organisation.”
“If there were a serious problem, I would know about it.”
You probably do have a lot of information, but that’s not the same thing as having an accurate picture.
Why it makes sense
Senior leaders aren’t short of information.
There are dashboards, board packs, management meetings, risk reports, financial results, programme updates, employee surveys and conversations with people they trust.
Good CEOs work hard to stay connected to their organisations. Good boards challenge what they’re told. Good investors develop multiple sources of information rather than relying on a single narrative.
So confidence in the picture isn’t irrational.
The problem is that information doesn’t have to be false to become less true.
It only has to change slightly as it travels.
What it hides
Imagine something is going badly wrong.
The person closest to it knows how serious it is. But they also know what happened the last time somebody raised a problem without a solution.
So they don’t hide it. They present it as a problem being managed.
Their manager adds context, actions and a recovery plan.
The senior leader taking it to the board doesn’t want to create unnecessary alarm, so the risk appears alongside a credible mitigation.
By the time it reaches the top, everybody involved has behaved reasonably.
Nobody needed to lie.
The picture can change without anybody deciding to change it.
That’s what makes this so difficult to see.
Every small adjustment makes sense to the person making it. The cumulative effect can be a picture that is calmer, cleaner and more manageable than the reality being experienced further down.
The Visibility Lie is believing that because you are well informed, you can see through that process.
But the information you would use to discover the gap has travelled through many of the same channels that created it.
The uncomfortable possibility
The more senior you become, the more consequential your decisions become.
And the less of the organisation you experience directly.
You are increasingly dependent on information travelling accurately towards you.
That creates an uncomfortable possibility:
You can be making completely rational decisions from a picture that isn’t quite real.
Targets are set. Priorities are added. Investment is approved or withheld. Risks are accepted. Leaders are backed, challenged or replaced.
Those decisions return to the organisation as reality.
The people further down then experience their consequences in full, while the people making them may still be looking at a version of the organisation that has been shaped to be understandable, manageable and safe to present.
There is another complication.
The more confident leaders are that they already know what’s happening, the harder it can become to tell them something that contradicts the picture they hold.
People learn what happens when bad news travels upwards. They learn whether uncertainty attracts curiosity or scrutiny. They learn whether raising a problem brings help or simply makes the problem theirs to solve.
Then they communicate accordingly.
Not dishonestly.
Rationally.
TEST IT
Don’t ask:
“Are people telling me the truth?”
That’s not really the question.
Instead, take the last serious problem that reached you later than you would have liked.
Who knew what, and when did they know it?
Then look at what travelled upwards before the full picture arrived.
What was softened?
What was framed as under control?
What looked like an isolated issue rather than part of something bigger?
And what would have happened to the person who had presented the unvarnished version earlier?
The gap between what was known and what reached you is your real visibility.
More information won’t necessarily close it. Understanding what happens to information on the way to you might.
Last updated October 2026
