Perspective can make all the difference in the world between a small business surviving and not surviving. Perspective is huge. It even has a significant impact on how well we solve the smaller challenges of day to day life. So what is perspective? How do we better understand it? How can we change it and how do we use it to make our small businesses more successful? Well, consider something that happens thousands of times an hour all over the world - landing a plane.
When a plane is coming in for a landing the pilot has to take several things into account if they want to end up on the ground in one piece. These variables are the fixed aspects of the airport and the current conditions of the moment. Every time a plane lands, the conditions are different from the time before to some varying degree. Combine this with the uniqueness of every airport and you get a lot of different variables, and these variables cause the pilot to constantly adjust what he will do and when he will do it to land the plane.
Now, there are a few things that never change and two of those are:
1. The angle of approach
2. The angle of descent
Angle of approach refers to how straight the plane is when approaching the runway.
Angle of Approach
Angle of descent refers to how steep the incline is as the plane lowers in altitude.
Basically, Angle of Descent refers to how steep of an angle you are approaching the runway. The extremes are either falling straight down like a rock or being so low to the ground as you approach that you are skimming trees for miles before you even see the runway. Both of these are not very safe and somewhere in the middle is the ideal approach path. This is so important and so universal that every airport has special lights at the beginning of the runway that flash red when you are coming in too high or too low. When you are in between those two the light turns green and you’re all good. When you are in the correct position you have the best “Perspective” to see everything you need to as you interact with the runway.
When we interact with the people and situations around us we are always evaluating the conditions of the situation and how we are approaching them. The better we understand the conditions of our lives, as well as our own approach and the approach of others, the better we can communicate and understand perspective.
In small business bad decisions happen more than we would like and when we look back it often occurs to us that if we had just known a few more facts or had just seen the situation from a new perspective or a new angle we would have been able to be more successful.
Perspective is so important that in my next blog I will talk more about how perspective actually affects business and how my perspective cost my company $40,000 dollars this past year.
Until next time, think about your perspective with the people and the challenges you have in your small business and your life. See if you can identify the angles you are approaching the subject from and if you can see any other way of looking at it.
If it’s not going well than maybe you’re not lined up to make a successful landing.
