Just like perception, perspective is a personal “truth”: The secret lies in "imagining" a perspective of the whole coin as you aspire towards truth.
The practical impacts of various perspectives
-Prioritization: Different stakeholders rank problems and solutions differently. Asking “whose perspective are we using?” prevents wasted effort and hidden trade-offs.
-Decision quality: Broader perspectives surface unseen risks and opportunities; narrower perspectives speed decisions but risk blind spots.
-Collaboration: Explicitly naming perspectives reduces conflict and increases mutual understanding.
-Innovation: Reframing a problem (customer, competitor, systems, regulatory, historical) unlocks new solution spaces.
-Resilience: Multiple perspectives create redundancy in sensing and reduce single-point failures in judgment.
Useful perspectives to rotate through
-Customer (needs & wants, retention?)
-Business (revenue, margin, strategic fit)
-Operational (capacity, reliability, cost-to-serve)
-Technical (scalability, maintainability, security)
-People (morale, skills, culture, change readiness)
-Regulatory & legal (compliance, contract risk)
-Data & evidence (what do metrics and experiments show?)
-Time horizon (short-term fix vs. long-term health)
-Competitor/market (how can rivals respond?)
-Ethical & societal (who benefits/who is harmed?)
-A simple practice to apply perspective systematically
-Perspective Mapping (5–10 minutes)
-State the decision or problem in one sentence.
-List 4–6 stakeholder perspectives to include.
-For each perspective, write the top 1–2 priorities and the biggest concern.
-Identify any tensions and the one perspective that acts as the tie-breaker (customer-first, safety-first).
Note one experiment or data point to reduce the biggest uncertainty.
Decision rule templates using perspectives
Customer-first: If customer harm is the primary risk, prioritize UX, safety, and rollback options even if it slows time-to-market.
Risk-first: If systemic risk is high (security/compliance), require mitigation before scale; adopt canary rollouts and guardrails.
Speed-first (time-limited): For launch windows, accept temporary technical debt but mandate a post-launch remediation plan and budget.
Cost-first: When budget constraints dominate, prefer scope reduction, automation, or phased rollouts.
Leadership prompts to surface perspective
“Whose view are we missing?”
“What would a frontline employee/customer/regulator tell us?”
“If this fails, which perspective will suffer most?”
“What decision would change if we prioritized long-term resilience over short-term growth?”
Caveats & balance
-Too many perspectives -analysis paralysis. Use proportionality: high-risk decisions need more perspectives; routine choices need fewer.
-Perspective fatigue: rotate who represents each view and avoid tokenism—ensure the input is substantive.
Power dynamics: named tie-breakers should be clear to prevent covert override by seniority.
Just like perception, perspective is a personal “truth”: The secret lies in "imagining" a perspective of the whole coin as you aspire towards truth. Perspective is a multiplier: the right lens at the right time turns constraints into clarity, risk into manageable trade-offs, and questions into strategic options.
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