In summary:
- Cognitive bias of "tunnelling"—focusing excessively on urgent tasks—can derail transformation programmes by sidelining long-term, human-centred goals.
- Tunnelling stems from perceived scarcity (time, resources), emotional urgency, and the comfort of checklists, leading teams to prioritise short-term deliverables over strategic vision.
- Practical strategies include normalising discussions about tunnelling, scheduling regular vision check-ins, empowering teams to reflect, and reframing urgency to align with long-term impact.
This is the second instalment of our three-part series, ‘Nudging a juggernaut’, where we explore the ways in which common cognitive biases – the way we think – can prevent transformation programmes delivering human-centred outcomes.
The three biases we’re exploring are:
- Problem naivety – click to read this one first
- Tunnelling
- Status quo bias
In Part 1, we explored problem naivety – the all-too-common tendency to “tick every box,” yet miss the human-centred objective. Here, we shine a light on another powerful behavioural trap: tunnelling.
What is tunnelling?
Tunnelling is when a person becomes so consumed by the urgent – “what’s on fire right now?” – that they have no time for what matters in the long run. In transformation programmes, it shows up when everyone’s focus narrows to the immediate crisis, the next delivery milestone, or whoever’s shouting loudest, crowding out vital conversations about vision or ultimate purpose. Unlike problem naivety, when people don’t realise there is a problem, with tunnelling people know that there is a problem (that the ‘why’ is being sidelined), but they struggle – whatever their intentions – to do anything about it.
Think about Crisis Chris – the competitively-busy colleague who’s constantly triple-booked and then drops out of meetings for something even more urgent. Chris is invaluable in a crisis. We all need to have blinkered focus to solve a problem sometimes. But when the future is perpetually on hold because today’s drama dominates, tunnelling takes over, and human-centricity suffers.
Crisis Chris is so consumed with urgency that they have no time for the vision.
Why does tunnelling happen?
Tunnelling isn't laziness or poor time management – it’s a very human, psychological response to real or perceived scarcity. And because it’s a recognisable response to stressors in the working environment, tunnelling can easily affect whole teams of individuals with the same cognitive bias on over-drive:
- Perceived scarcity: when we feel we have too little time, money, or resources – even if the reality is less bleak – our brains default to short-term priorities.
- Emotional urgency: the adrenaline of firefighting is compelling. Teams and managers find themselves addicted to “doing” and “fixing” now, while strategic thinking gets squeezed out.
- The safety of the checklist: amid complexity, there is comfort in focusing on quickly-completed tasks, even when they don’t move us any closer to the intended impact.
As with all cognitive biases, in small doses they help us navigate perceived problems. Short-term tunnelling can be useful for hitting deadlines! It’s when it becomes the norm that it poses a risk to the programme vision. Put another way, delivery colleagues often thrive on being very busy, and that’s great for ‘productivity’, but short-term urgency can become the enemy of long-term impact.
The way programmes resource delivery phases can exacerbate this. Teams onboard dozens of new colleagues who are told what they’re here to do, but not ‘why’. They’ve never heard about the original vision – they just hit the ground running to tackle the next big deadline.
The danger: lurching from crisis to crisis
The issue with tunnelling is that you are very unlikely to fulfil a vision ‘one crisis at a time’. Programme teams lurch from milestone to milestone in perpetual firefighting mode. Even the most engaged, purposeful colleagues lose faith in the vision. Deliverables get ticked off, but the transformation’s “north star” – that bold, human-centred aspiration – fades from view. It’s not that it’s seen as unimportant, it’s that it’s seen as something that can wait. People don’t appreciate the ‘why now?’.
As we heard from a participant on one of our workshops on tunnelling: “despite hitting all the short-term targets, vital ‘big picture’ goals were forgotten, which had resulted in solution-drift. This led to difficult conversations with stakeholders and rework to course-correct to the transformation vision. Ironically, tunnelling on deliverables over vision resulted in senior focus on what had been neglected, which overshadowed all that had been delivered.
How do you know tunnelling is taking hold?
Given that, by its very nature, tunnelling means you have narrowed your focus to the exclusion of the important-but-not-urgent, how can you recognise tunnelling in action? Some of the signs we see on programmes are:
- Teams are preoccupied with immediate blockers (“We’ll worry about the future goals later – let’s fix this now!”)
- Key stakeholders or business areas are left in the dark about why changes are happening, just told to “get on with it.”
- There’s little space for reflection, learning, or celebrating progress beyond whatever’s on fire today.
- The “vision” is dusted off for all-hands meetings but doesn’t feature in day to day conversations about the solution or deliverables.
As one leader shared, “You find yourself looking down at the numbers, chasing KPIs – and before you know it, another month has passed and you haven’t thought at all about the end-goal, the reason you’re doing any of this.”
How to nudge colleagues out of the tunnel
Berating people for ignoring the vision will, unsurprisingly, backfire – but when we experience resistance we tend to double down on our advocacy. We must avoid this trap ourselves (no nudging with sledgehammers please!) and instead create psychologically safe ways to keep longer-term goals on the table in the face of urgent demands. It’s about ‘why now?’.
The tactics and practical behaviours we've found effective include:
- Start by bringing the tunnelling trap to the surface the trap, make it OK to talk about: we all tunnel. Normalise the reality. Bring the pattern into the open – without blame – so people can notice when they, or their teams, have slipped into it. Acknowledge when it’s helpful; even essential. Acknowledge when that blinkered focus might be an ‘overplayed strength’, and where you’ve noticed yourself falling into that trap. Humility and the language of ‘we’ is key.
- Pause for feedforward: don’t linger on ‘the problem’ too long. Shift the focus from the shared problem of tunnelling to “feedforward” – actively planning what lessons to carry into upcoming work to make space for human-centricity, not just what didn’t work last time. It keeps colleagues future-focused and empowers them to live the vision – remember, they know it’s important, it just wasn’t urgent.
- Regular ‘vision check-ins’: carve out protected time (even brief slots) in team meetings to revisit the programme’s vision and purpose – and to invite stories of when recent actions did (or didn’t) serve it. Model a growth mindset in celebrating where people spot the symptoms of sidelining – “good point! What can we do about that?”. Shift the narrative from failure to opportunity.
- Empower ‘Crisis Chris’ (and their team) to step back: encourage team members to claim space for reflection – even just a few minutes – to reconnect with the vision and link short-term activity to long-term impact. Maybe it doesn’t have to be urgent deadlines or the vision. Maybe the vision is a lens through which to see everything else. If you have influence over your team meeting agenda – get it on there! If not, grab a coffee with key culprits. Empathise with the pressure they’re under, and encourage a reframing of priorities around overall risk to delivery, over mere urgency. It could empower your colleagues to push back on urgency that’s not serving the vision well.
Final thoughts
Tunnelling isn’t a personal failing; it is a natural human response to perceived scarcity and pressure. In large transformations with frequent deadlines and often conflicting priorities, it's almost inevitable! Overcoming it means building moments – and cultures – where urgency and vision can coexist, and where stepping back to “see the forest” is as valued as clearing the next tree. It means helping colleagues lean into ‘why now?’.
In our final article of this series, we'll tackle status quo bias – how “the way we’ve always done things” stifles innovation, and how you can nudge your juggernaut into truly sustainable change.
Curious to share your own “tunnelling” stories or tips? Join the conversation – usher in some more enlightened thinking together!
Want to go beyond nudging? Join us at the SDinGov conference for a workshop on ‘re-wiring the juggernaut’, for practical advice on how to harness the inner workings of a programme, to reclaim focus on human-centred outcomes!
Stay tuned for Part 3: Escaping the status-quo.
This series is inspired by workshops and lunch & learn sessions with practitioners and transformation leaders from Sopra Steria and beyond, March 2025.