In one scene from the movie “Precious,” we see the main character, Clarisse Precious Jones, getting ready for school in the morning. We see this obese African American teen put on a red headband—but looking in the mirror, we see the red headband on a pretty, thin blonde teen. She picks up and puts on jewelry—and we see the blonde teen wearing the jewelry. Although Precious is in reality an overweight child of color, she sees a thin, blue-eyed blonde in the mirror, because she is looking at herself through unrealistic filters—what I call distorting goggles.

I often see a similar phenomenon when looking at management systems—the person in charge of the system has rose-colored glasses on, looking at everything that’s right about the system, and overlooking the not-so-nice. What's worse, is that they often don't see reality at all, but instead see what they want the system to be. Like Precious, these quality managers view their management system through distorting goggles.

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