| The social tension of recognizing that other people understand something that you don't is real and often asking does not help, because the ask presents a social signal that leads to more isolation. Another approach is to consider the work you are assigned more deeply before you begin and understand the various different ways it could be done. Each assignment will have multiple parts or aspects and those aspects each can have more or less time spent on them to achieve various qualities. Quick, superficial breadth first vs deep depth first, etc. Getting something precise and correct vs getting something good enough, etc. If you can understand and articulate the choices that are available to you in how the work is to be done between the various approaches- basically understanding how much time to put into what aspects to get what values or qualities- then you can form a hypothesis about what makes sense and then you can take that hypothesis to your manager. Asking them for direction on what to solve/optimize/prioritize for given 2 or 3 alternatives before getting too deep into the work is a good, valuable question. Through those answers and conversations you will more directly start to understand the qualities and outcomes that are important, and how important they are (inferring from how much time/depth should go into them). Most times there is no single "big picture" at large organizations, rather there are many individually authored narratives that may allude to shared facts but also are highly personal and often involve hidden agendas that are held close by individual managers. All human organizations involve politics, and this is what politics is. Even organization-scale planning tools like OKRs are highly contextual and cannot be taken too literally. For any given person, understanding the near term choices available to them in exactly how their time is spent, and what the results of those choices are in terms of qualities of outcomes, and then asking for help selecting the right outcomes, then executing on those choices, and following up if new learnings present themselves or if things are not as expected, is a good, politics-free approach. It can be hard to do this, to not just barge ahead doing the work but to think about various ways the work could be done. Hard but worth it. This approach of understanding every situation/assignment as set of choices, is big picture thinking in disguise. Hope that helps. Good luck. |