How perspective helps your business

Shut your eyes and imagine December 2008. You are taking a quiet moment to celebrate your achievements. What will be the most meaningful for you?

Why does perspective matter? Because time and time again I witness and experience how becoming conscious of our “where-we-are-at” perspective affects our outcomes.

No excuses because most of business is still on holiday. So grab a pen and check your current perspective by using this simple tool called the “perspectives wheel”:

• Draw a large circle on a blank page.
• Divide the circle into eight sections.
• Select one section and write down the title of the current perspective you hold about the coming year, about your business. Write down everything you can about this perspective. Your thoughts, feelings and ideas.
• Select a section opposite to where you have just written, choose a perspective that is opposite to the one you have just written about, walk to the opposite side of the room or table and write it down. It doesn’t matter in the slightest whether you believe this place to be possible or not; I know you have an imagination, use it. Write down the name of this perspective and all your thoughts and ideas.
• Now fill in the rest of the wheel with different perspectives. Go through each section, name the perspective and put down all your thoughts and ideas. Play with this, have some fun. You may choose a section that is the Bart Simpson perspective.
• Once you have filled the wheel, mentally walk through each perspective, ask yourself what is possible from this perspective – is this the place you want to create your business outcomes for the year?
• Select one, a perspective that you want to be in. It may be in the wheel or maybe you have thought of another, a combination of two or three or more. Name it and write about this place.
• Next get into action. Create a plan.

“Vision without action is a daydream. Action without vision is a nightmare.” (Japanese proverb).

Now that you have chosen your perspective, list down all the things that you need to get into action. Set some goals and run these through the goal setting process described in my 30 November blog.

From the perspective you have chosen, answer the questions below for the coming year:

My purpose is:

……………………………………………………………………………………………………

The difference I intend to make this year is:

……………………………………………………………………………………………………

The bigger game for me this year is:

……………………………………………………………………………………………………

My top three business goals are:

……………………………………………………………………………………………

……………………………………………………………………………………………

……………………………………………………………………………………………

My top three personal goals are:

……………………………………………………………………………………………

……………………………………………………………………………………………

……………………………………………………………………………………………

Are your business and personal goals aligned? Wishing you an exciting and prosperous year ahead.

Pollyanna Lenkic is an experienced facilitator, certified coach and a certified practitioner of NLP. In 1990 she co-founded a specialist IT recruitment consultancy in London, which grew to employ 18 people and turnover £11 million ($27 million). This blog is about the mistakes she made and the lessons she learned building a business the first time round and how to do it better second time round.

For more Second Time Around, click here.