A new perspective

I've lived in my house in Shropshire, England, since 2006. It's a little stone cottage on the side of a valley, built around 1810, with a couple of stone barns. A small track leads to the house, and fields and trees surround it - you can't see another building from the house, and it's silent, secluded and peaceful.

Jeannie and I like to take walks from the house, and our favourite walk is down the track, through a large field, and then all around the valley until we end up back at the house again seven kilometres later.?

I've lost count of the number of times we've done that walk - it usually takes longer than it should because we constantly stop to look at a plant (Jeannie's also an herbal medicine practitioner and is fantastic at spotting medicinal herbs) or to wonder at the view from particular spots, taking photos.

A few years ago, I got myself a drone. I've always loved the idea of radio-controlled flying things. I was a keen photographer while studying for my Diploma in Fine Art, so combining both hobbies into a single activity has been fun!

As with most drones nowadays, the idea is that you connect your smartphone to the controller, and while you fly it into the sky, the phone screen displays what the drone's camera sees up there.

The first time I flew it into our valley, I was delighted as I saw Jeannie and me get smaller and smaller on the phone's screen. More of the big field came into view, and then the boundaries of the field, and the next, and the next. As I tilted the camera up, I saw the hills on the horizon and the nearby farm, and suddenly, I couldn't tell from the view on the screen exactly where the drone was - everything was suddenly entirely unfamiliar.?

And then it struck me.

I'd seen this valley from so many angles for years, but this view from above was utterly different. Our neighbour's farm, a five- or ten-minute drive down winding lanes to get to, is connected to us by only a few fields. I saw patches of ground I hadn't realised were even there, flanked by familiar areas we'd walked down many times before. I finally understood the actual layout of our beautiful valley and how the landscape worked as one. I saw outlines from previous boundaries and tracks that had once been invisible to me but were now clearly a daily route for the farmers who'd made them.

I saw patterns made by fields and trees and even the circular markings made by an ancient Roman settlement, invisible from ground level. After a few flying hours around different parts of the valley, I can now recognise it from the air. When I'm walking the tracks, I have a more elevated sense of where I am and how my location relates to the rest of the valley; I feel more part of it and understand my place as I walk.

When running our businesses, most of us tend to stay focused on what's right ahead of us, in delivery, reactive. On the ground, following the path?that's laid out?before us.

Perspective changes everything. The most challenging time to take time out of the day-to-day running of the business is when you need to do so the most.?If you can stop, even for a few hours, but preferably for a few days, and?just?stop.

Ideas?and?solutions and alternative options just flow, and you get that insight from angles that weren't available before, just like when I could see my valley from the drone's point of view for the first time.

I know. There's no time!

It's said that when his work was reaching its peak, and he was touring and speaking constantly, Mahatma Gandhi said to his aides that he needed to carve out time each day to meditate for one hour. His aides were horrified and told him he didn't have time for a whole hour of meditation. He replied:

"Then I'll meditate for two."

He recognised that the more you have going on in your life, the more you need to make time to see it from a new perspective. Take time to stop, breathe, and allow yourself to see your business from new angles. New opportunities, solutions, and strategies will come into view as soon as you stop looking for them.

I know it's hard to take time off to 'do nothing'?for many of us. Stepping?outside of the business and into a workshop guided by a trusted framework can be even more helpful than attempting to create an insight vacuum by ourselves.?

It's for this reason that?we run our Clarity workshops at Remote. In these workshops, we take that drone controller and push it forward,?taking you to?a brand new perspective?of?your business.?

From there, we plan the first step of your transformation. Study, Clarify, Optimise, Prototype, Execute. It all starts with a Clarity workshop. Drop me a line if you'd like to get this perspective.?