It’s not only how fast you shift—it’s how clearly you see.
I was part of the team behind the Alert Doctors project. But it didn’t begin with a strategy session or a policy draft.
It began with a tragedy.
A young girl died after being misdiagnosed by a fatigued junior doctor. Like many, we assumed the problem was clear: doctors weren’t getting enough sleep. But something didn’t sit right. Rather than jump to the usual fixes, we paused and asked a more revealing question:
“What’s motivating them to keep going?”
That shift reframed the entire approach.
Instead of treating doctors as targets of behaviour change, we brought them in as co-researchers. We partnered with globally recognised sleep scientists who understood the dynamics of environments like aviation and defence. Together with practising clinicians, we examined the human factors shaping performance and fatigue.
Through that work, patterns began to emerge.
Some doctors genuinely believed they didn’t need as much sleep as others. Others saw constant availability as core to their identity. Being there—always—wasn’t about defiance. It was about what it meant to be good.
There wasn’t resistance to rest. There simply wasn’t the motivation to prioritise it over what they felt truly mattered: showing up, no matter what.
That insight reshaped the path forward.
We didn’t prescribe new rules. We focused on removing the invisible barriers that made rest feel irrelevant—or even disloyal. We created space for experimentation about what sustainable care could look like, not just for patients but also for doctors themselves.
I’ve seen firsthand how much more impactful the work becomes when you stop trying to convince and start trying to understand.
This is the essence of perceptual flexibility: the ability to reimagine the problem rather than rotate through solutions.
Many leaders are skilled at set-shifting—adjusting priorities, juggling demands, and staying nimble. It’s like changing lanes in traffic: responsive, efficient, adaptive.
But perceptual flexibility? That’s checking whether you’re even on the right road.
Without it:
- We treat symptoms while root causes go unexamined.
- We rely on logic and overlook emotional or identity-based drivers.
- We stay busy solving what’s visible, while the real issue remains untouched.
Recent research by Ionescu et al. (2024) confirms that cognitive flexibility isn’t a single skill. Task switching and problem reframing draw on different capabilities, and in complex change, the reframing often makes progress possible.
As Thomas Wedell-Wedellsborg, author of What’s Your Problem? and Are You Solving the Right Problems? puts it:
“Creative solutions nearly always come from an alternative explanation for—or a reframing of—your problem.”
So here’s your prompt for the week:
- What persistent challenge keeps resurfacing?
- What assumptions are shaping how it’s defined?
- And if you asked, “What else could this be?”—what might shift?
Because in complex change, your most impactful move isn’t finding a faster route. It’s realising you may be headed somewhere you no longer need to go.
Because intellectual flexibility isn’t reaction—it’s re-seeing.
