Why (Through 3 Different Ways) Changing Perspectives Will Improve Your Decisions

What is Changing Perspectives?

Changing perspectives means being open to accepting new ideas and points of view.

It comes with an awareness that you aren't seeing the complete picture. Your perspective comes with constraints. Being open to other perspectives gives you more information to help you decide.

The underlying point here is ensure you're open to changing your mind.

Being stuck with tunnel vision limits your ability to see what you don't know. So having an open mind is essential to being open to new perspectives.

This is why changing perspectives is so important.

You don't know what you don't know.

New perspectives give rise to new information. They bring to mind ideas and thoughts you hadn't even considered. A change of perspective can bring light to the darkness hiding truths you can't see.

Imagination: Perspectives in Your Head

We see far more with our minds than our eyes.

Our eyes are incredible. They enable us to see the bright of day and the dark of night. The orange leaves of fall, the deep lilac shades of lavender, and the haze of a distant hill.

But our minds take us even further.

“The eyesight for an eagle is what thought is to a man.”―Dejan Stojanovic"

Minds create images beyond our eyes. There may be no greater painter than our imagination. Dejan Stojanovic was exactly right when he said, the eyesight for an eagle is what thought is to a man.

What we view, we judge.

We form opinions and grow beliefs on the information we absorb with our eyes and imagine in our minds. Misused, our imagination creates cul-de-sacs of unchallenged perspectives we use to make decisions.

We then use these perspectives to form assumptions that influence future choices.

Our greatest strength is our ability to use our thoughts  to form perspectives beyond what we see. Our greatest weakness is our failure to use different perspectives to help us form new views.

It isn’t so much about us changing perspectives. We update our opinions and beliefs frequently.

What we don’t do is use this unique ability deliberately.

Here is where the good of new perspectives can strengthen our decisions. So, how do we grasp this opportunity?

How to Change Your Perspective

A perspective is a viewpoint.

Most typically, we take the situation we’re in and build upon it. We seek new information, but we also use our beliefs to judge what we learn.

Our biases are adding filters to the viewpoint before us. This all happens subconsciously.

The shift comes from making the activity of changing perspectives a conscious one.

When you make seeking perspective a conscious act, you get to change the dynamics of the view.  We can change the type of view, the magnification of the view, and the range of consideration.

Deliberately changing perspectives offer us an astonishing array of views.

But before we get to the different views, we need to get to the first part of the how.

Moving decision-making from the subconscious to the conscious is not easy. Speed is instinctive. Even though our environment no longer demands it, we accept urgency when our life doesn’t need to.

It is arguably humanity's greatest weakness. Our consent to act with urgency in non-urgent situations.

The first goal must be to break this behaviour.

Yes, we need to learn to decide slowly.

Once you begin deciding slowly, your choices become conscious ones. With conscious thought comes the opportunity on offer.

Now, choice abounds as you have a multitude of perspectives to choose from. Each one adds different thoughts as you build new perspectives. Let’s have a look at three.

Your Hero's Perspective

Decisions often trap us because we can’t remove ourselves as the main actor.

But what would you do if you were Steve Jobs or Elon Musk?

How would Benjamin Franklin consider the situation you find yourself in?

Maybe you might become Margaret Thatcher for a moment.

Whoever your hero is, you will know them well. You will know their traits, their behaviours and patterns of thought.

Elon might force you to think more granular and look to reason from first principles. Steve Jobs might be more ruthless in his pursuit of goal alignment. Ben Franklin would pose questions, pushing you to understand first. Margaret Thatcher, well the iron lady would cut the fluff and get to the heart of the matter.

The Inverted Perspective

Consider the other side for a moment.

Who might feel the impact of your decision?

The inverted perspective takes to the other side of your decision.  In a business situation, it most likely will be a customer. New products or new pricing should compel us to put ourselves in our customer's shoes.

It’s an obvious perspective, but one often overlooked.

When you ask questions from the other side, different information appears.

• Why have they increased the price?
• What am I getting when I pay more?
• Is this worth it?

All these questions prompt you to dig for more information. Before, assumptions or ignorance meant have excluded them.

The Time Travel Perspective

Decisions often come with time pressures.

Everything is about now. How we feel now. How others feel and what their opinions are. It is easy to feel trapped.

Time travel helps us depart this scene and put ourselves in the past or the future.

It gives us the capacity to look at the choice we face from a different lens. This subtle shift gives us the perspective of time we often forget.

In the moment, your decision is the biggest dilemma you’ll ever face. Six months on, you might wonder what all the fuss was about.

The decision didn’t change much. Unthought-of consequences occurred, reducing the impact of the choices made. It’s only hindsight when these outcomes become known.

Time travel also gives us the opportunity to conduct a premortem. Consider a business project fails.

We tend to wait until it does and conduct an uncomfortable post-mortem. Instead, use your imagination — and your teams — to picture the failure before it happens.

New insights often appear when we consider the unconsidered. This is the premortem.

Imagining time travel brings these different—and helpful perspectives into view. ‍

Why You Need to Change Perspectives

Stuck in a tunnel, our decision-making suffers the same limitations.

Imagination used consciously enables us to escape the enclosed view in front of us. This is why changing perspectives is so important.

Gone are the walls of a restricted view. Now, our imagination is the only limit.

Used consciously, changing perspectives offers a huge upside. Poor decision-making occurs when we decide quickly with limited information. A healthy dose of assumptions and opinions in hand compound the choice.

Conversely, good decisions occur when we seek new perspectives. Each of the following ways brings a different way to see the situation you face.

• Your Hero's Perspective
• The Inverted Perspective
• The Time Travel Perspective

Each one of these pushes you to use your imagination. Looking at a situation with someone else’s eyes and mind gives rise to this.

New questions appear.

Imagination gives us new outcomes and new solutions. It goes to show how the simple act of changing perspectives can improve your decisions.

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