Archive for June 2020
Perspective and Change
If you can’t see the world from another’s perspective you are incapable of changing the world in a forward-looking, progressive manner. Progressive here means improving conditions for people and the planet which we share with other life forms. Being willing to seek out alternative viewpoints, and seeking to understand them are key competencies needed for those looking to create change in themselves, in society and in the world in which we live. I am not talking about “alternative facts” which translates as lies. I am talking about viewpoints, which is how others experience the world and the society in which they live. Those who don’t go looking or can’t see from another’s perspective are only capable of adhering to the status-quo or of changes which are backward-looking, often disregarding science, facts and data, locked into a worldview which includes returning to the “nostalgia” of how great things used to be. It is of course a false nostalgia for things were never that “great”.
The same holds true for organizations. Those within an organization, who are not capable of seeing the organization from another’s perspective will be unable to create positive change for that organization. In times of turmoil being able to see things from other perspectives can be the difference between survival and extinction for the organization.
There are a few conditions which help enable those seeking out progressive change. First is the understanding that change is inevitable. Nothing stands still forever. You can let change happen to you and your organization or you can be a force, helping to create and craft the changes that will occur. A proactive change agent is likely to be more successful than a reactionary change agent.
Second, in order to see the world or the organization from another’s perspective you must have empathy. You must be able to put yourself in another’s shoes. (There are those who have absolutely no capacity for empathy. It is not physically or mentally possible for them.) I recently saw a speaker ask for a show of hands from a room full of (mostly white) people, “how many of you would be willing to go through the rest of your life being treated as Blacks are currently treated in the USA?” Not a single hand went up. That doesn’t mean that the group understood day-to-day what Blacks go through, but it does mean that at some level they could empathize with Blacks and understood that the treatment was different than how others are being treated. And that treatment was not as favorable as how they themselves were currently being treated. And that empathy does set the stage for the group to say, “it is not right, it must change”.
A third condition needed is the understanding that life doesn’t need to be a zero-sum game. For me to win, you don’t necessarily have to lose. Life, society and organizations can operate according to win-win principles. If I have enough to eat, it doesn’t mean that you have to go hungry. It can be more difficult to create win-win propositions, and it may involve some compromises, but in the long-run it achieves much higher buy-in from groups and as its name implies it is a win-win where everyone can come out ahead.
Right now, the world is faced with a global pandemic, an economy on life-support, and a racist miasma that has penetrated the halls of power and plagues the most vulnerable among us. But the conditions also seem ripe for change to occur, if the right people are put into the right positions. World War II legend and 34th President of the United States, Dwight Eisenhower said, “Whenever I run into a problem I can’t solve, I always make it bigger. I can never solve it by trying to make it smaller, but if I make it big enough, I can begin to see the outlines of a solution.” If you try to make the problem small you run the risk of half-way solutions that won’t truly change or fix things. Big problems require big solutions that are more likely to create lasting change. It is time for some Big Solutions.
Jeffrey Saltzman's Blog 