Perspective

Recently my family was treated to a gift - a ride on The Wheel of Brisbane. It was a nice day out with the kids and my wife, taking the train up from the Gold Coast to the big city and all the while, building up excitement in the kids. A short walk up the Southbank foreshore and there it was, looming large, "Look, the giant wheel Daddy!" my eldest exclaimed. We moved through the ticketing booth and waited our turn to enter the gondola selected for us by the polite yet militant ground staff.

A confession; I  - like many others - am not a fan of heights. Not debilitatingly so, but they do make me uncomfortable, and when in a small glass "coffin" that freely swings with two children jostling around for the best view, I had to actively get control of my nerves! When up in the air (and nerves in check) the view of the city and river were fantastic. It was great to have the different vantage point and this prompted me to consider perspective.

Perspective is a dynamic attribute. Most often, telling someone to "get some perspective" usually involves the person taking a step back from their close up, narrow focus on a problem to see the greater scheme, the whole picture or the long-term view. While this is important, the whole vision is required - close up, focused effort at times and then at others a long-term, panoramic vision to see where that focused effort sits in the grander scheme and how it is progressing towards an ultimate goal.

I had recently read a book by a colleague (as well as some co-authors) on resilience (Dr Dan Pronk et. al. "The Resilience Shield"). As part of their dive into resilience (perhaps a blog topic in itself for another day) a discussion was had on perspective and used the analogy of a nightclub dance floor (of all things!). When enjoying the moment dancing (analogous to focused work on the day to day or minutiae) the attention to the immediate surrounds and current experience don't allow for the greater situational awareness; whereas being above the floor in the seating areas (taking in the bigger picture) allows us to observe where the exits are, that our friend has just arrived at the party and where to find the toilets!

I liked the analogy as it is something that can be easily pictured and related to. The bigger picture in the elevated seating area gives the opportunity to strategize and plan; but the person on the dancefloor is in the action. Similarly, in the military there are separate people who look at the big picture (commanders) and those who do the coalface work (soldiers/sailors/airmen etc.) to allow the whole beast to effectively get the job done. The person who manages this best is someone who can transition between the 2 stages effectively - be focused on the job at hand, but then able to lift their head and observe what has been done, what is going on now and how it fits into the whole body of work, and then what are the next steps into the future to progress to the next goal.

A couple of things to differentiate about perspective: having perspective over the past is not the same as having perspective over the future. Perspective for the past allows us to take in the data of what has happened, the facts, and use this to shape our learning and preparation for future pursuits. It allows us to see where things have gone right, and more importantly where things have not gone how we had planned. We can take this information, appreciate the journey it has taken us on to where we are, and allow it to plan for our future endeavours. Perspective over the future is different in that there are a number of unknowns that will weigh in on whether our progress will be successful, our goals will shift or any number of possibilities. Past perspective is concrete in the facts (not necessarily how we relate to those facts), but future perspective is highly malleable through both what we can and can't control, pure potential.

We might expand on each of past and future perspectives in future blogs, however to complete the thought on the potential of future perspective, and get the most out of this potential I find it worthwhile to carve out some time to be "above, observing the dance floor". This can take many levels - planning a day first thing in the morning, a month, a particular project or a year (e.g. how many times should I schedule in cleaning out my gutters!). A helpful tool I had found for this was given to me by my sister-in-law one Christmas, a book on journaling called "The Bullet Journal Method" which essentially took those plans for day, month, year etc. and put them all into one journal. Doing this early in the morning then allowed me to focus on the dancing/grunt work (depending on which analogy you liked earlier) during the day, and then the idea was to go back to the journal at the end of the day and reflect, taking that past perspective view and using it to plan the next time period. This sort of method is an effective tool to allow transitions between perspectives (past, present and future) pretty seamlessly when practiced, causing progress to be much more efficient. Making the most out of the possibilities for the future!

Perspective is to be continued...