To use our analogy, do you just see the tip of an iceberg or do you spend the time, energy and thinking required to look below the surface to better understand the complexities and depth of an issue? Two recent events provide excellent examples of how looking at only the tip of an iceberg distorts our vision of reality.

Event #1: The Occupy Movement – now two months old and spanning dozens of cities around the United States, protesters are using the slogan of “99% v. 1%” to make people visible to key issues such as corporate greed and excessive wealth. These two concerns are merely the tip of the iceberg, however, and their solutions are perhaps far more complex than the issues themselves. For example, on November 1, Occupy Philadelphia members protested outside the Comcast building because the company does not pay property taxes. In the words of one protester "It's not fair that in a poor city, a big corporation can get away with that.” While this tip of the iceberg is true, if one would look beneath its surface they would see that Comcast qualified for the city's tax-abatement program for new construction.   

The goal of income redistribution advocated by the Occupy protesters is another example of the tip of an iceberg analogy.  As Ross Douhat wrote in the New York Times “true social mobility and broadly shared prosperity are not so easily achieved. Remember that those tax dollars, once collected, would not be disbursed with perfect effectiveness to the most deserving members of the American middle class.  Instead, they would be used to buy a little more time for our failing public institutions — postponing a reckoning with unsustainable pension commitments, delaying necessary reforms in our entitlement system and propping up an educational sector whose results don’t match the costs.”

Event #2: The death of Steve Jobs (October 5, 2011), co-founder of Apple Computer. Clearly he was an innovator, visionary and man of action. He was given a lot of credit for bringing technology into our homes and lives. Ironically enough, one week after Jobs’ death, on October 12, 2011 Dennis Ritchie, another pioneer in computer technology, died.   Ritchie was an American computer scientist who "helped shape the digital era." He created the C programming language and, with long-time colleague Ken Thompson, the UNIX operating system. Jobs may have created sleek looking products but Ritchie helped to build the initial programming language that launched the internet age.  Clearly, both men played a significant role in the lives of technology-using people everywhere.  By looking at the headlines, or tip of the iceberg, we would only consider the loss (and reflect on the contribution) of Steve Jobs. Technology is far more complex than the contribution of any one person.

In today’s hyper-connected global economy, individuals need to realize that their own professional development resembles the tip of the iceberg.   Professionals tend to work on hyper-specific tasks today and focus on its completion. Doing so resembles looking solely at the tip of an iceberg. To succeed today people need to look below the surface in order to recognize that professional development is directly linked to personal growth. Only then will they realize the depths of their abilities.