In This Issue: May 24, 2007

• It's not what you're looking at, it's from where you're looking at it. Here are three ways on How to get some perspective for any challenge you are facing
• Market Place Product of the Month:
  • 125,000 different perspectives in a single book
  • Recording of the controversial ICF workshop "The Five Unspeakable Truths About Coaching That None Dare Acknowledge" now available
• Got It Going On: I'm booking speaking gigs for the second half of the year - could I help your organization? Also: A public workshop in Toronto this week. And in June, my European tour: Prague, Helsinki and Istanbul.

Warm wishes,

Michael Bungay Stanier
Principal, Box of Crayons

PS - Know anyone who's lost a little perspective? Feel free to pass on Outside the Lines to anyone you know wants a life of fun, inspiration and action.

How to Get Some Perspective

Have you ever felt caught up in the hurly-burly of the moment?

Suddenly everything's important and urgent. You've got tunnel vision. It's go go go!

Now, sometimes having that singular focus can be a great thing, creating momentum and focus to get you where you want to be.

And sometimes it can tangle you up.

I was wrestling something like this recently, trying to decide where to turn my focus on various projects.

And then I came across this site. It gave me a friendly nudge about the size of my concerns relative to a few other things.

And I realised that sometimes we need our own Copernican revolution, a shift in thinking and being where the world stops circling around us and how we see things ("it's all about me!") and we step into another set of shoes.

Here are three strategies that can have you trying on those alternative pairs of shoes...

Strategy 1: Shift your perspective in time

Recently, I read a book that talked about two different types of time - kairos (opportunity or the propitious moment) and chronos (eternal or ongoing time). Kairos is the time of cleverness, chronos is the time of wisdom.

These two different types of time hold and sustain the tension between innovation and stability, the new and the familiar.

Each is important, each anchors one of the spectrum ends that stretches between right now and eternity. You can see that spectrum and the difference between now, nowadays and "the long now" here.

In the bustle of the present moment, where everything feels like it is accelerating, it's easy to stay in the seductive quicksilver moment of kairos and forget chronos altogether.

At the same time, for some of us (like me) it can be tempting to zip into the future, get distracted and totally miss the here and now.

Thinking about the challenge at hand, here are just four questions to shift your time perspective:

• What's important right now?
• In 90 days what needs to be different?
• Ten years from now, what will be important?
• How could this affect your legacy?

Strategy 2: Shift your perspective in space

When teaching creativity to teams in organizations, I'm forever getting people to move around and sit, stand and strut in different locations. In part it's just to stop their brains and bums going numb. But it's more than that: if you want to think differently, move differently.

For instance, you have a place where you are at your most focused and efficient. For many of us, it's our desk at work. This is a powerful and limiting place. To think and work differently, pick up and move somewhere else in the building. New ideas and perspectives guaranteed.

Thinking about the challenge at hand, here are just four places that will shift your perspective in space

• Turn your chair around.
• Walk around the neighbourhood
• Find the comfiest place to be
• Exercise and raise your heart rate.

Strategy 3: Shift your perspective in sympathy

According to NLP, to fully understand a situation you need to view it from all three perceptual positions:

• Me: the position of the person who is doing, experiencing or receiving the actual event
• You: the position of another who is also taking part in the event
• Observer: the position of an observer watching the event unfold, not an active participant.

Thinking about the challenge at hand, stand in each of these positions. What do you notice?

Don't take my word for it

Smart folks thinking out loud about perspective.

"What a delightful thing this perspective is!"
- Paolo Uccello, Italian 15th Century artist

"It is not easy to see how the more extreme forms of nationalism can long survive when men have seen the Earth in its true perspective as a single small globe against the stars."
- Arthur C. Clarke, American author

"Unless you've got a thousand year perspective backwards and forwards, you are trapped in the present."
- Rainer Maria Rilke, French poet

"The real act of discovery is not in finding new lands, but in seeing with new eyes."
- Marcel Proust, French author

"We do not see things as they are. We see them as we are."
- Talmudic Proverb

Want to learn more? Here are some useful resources

The Clock of the Long Now, Stewart Brand. A wonderful book about a clock that's being built to measure (and last) the next 10,000 years and which speaks profoundly to time and responsibility. You can also find out more at their website.

Taming Your Gremlin, Rick Carson. Help manage that "inner critic" that can provide us with some a persuasive and distorted world view. Accessible, funny and wise - this is a self-help classic

NLP at Work, Sue Knight. It's through NLP I learned about the three perceptual positions.

The Eight Irresistible Principles of Fun. Always good to shift your view on things a little

A matter of scale: This site takes you on a fantastic journey from meta to micro in seconds.

Market Place Product of the Month: 125,000 different perspectives in a single book

On the January 1st 2000 I woke up with two things: a slight hangover from celebrating the arrival of the new millennium and the nascent idea for Get Unstuck & Get Going.

My background in creativity and innovation had somehow clicked with my growing interest in coaching and - mixed up with dancing and cocktails the night before - had combined in an idea for a book that brought together play and discipline, funky and focus, creativity and a plan to get things done.

Get Unstuck & Get Going is designed like a child's flip book so you can create 125,000 different combinations of inspiring stories, provocative quotations and powerful human dynamics models - all of which will help you generate new perspectives and get unstuck.

If "stuck" is having just one way to see a situation, then unstuck is having a range of perspectives - and the choice and freedom to do something about it.

You can see how Get Unstuck & Get Going brings together possibilities and planning here.

PS - Get Unstuck & Get Going won an Honourable Mention in last year's IPPY awards for "Book of the Year - Outstanding Design", one of four awards we've picked up in the last 12 months.

The Five Unspeakable Truths...

Some of you will have followed the saga following the workshop Molly Gordon, Jen Louden and I gave at the ICF Conference in November. The Five Unspeakable Truths About Coaching That None Dare Acknowledge was designed to provoke and confront those involved in coaching to think about their "shadow side" as coaches - the goal being the deepening of wisdom and power that often comes from looking in these difficult places.

I'm delighted to say we've come to an amicable agreement with the ICF, and the recording is now available for purchase here (It's down the bottom of the page, no. 99-101). We've recorded an introductory piece to help provide better context for what we talk about.

Got It Going On: Michael's Speaking Gigs

I'm currently finalizing my schedule for speaking in organizations and at conferences in the second half of the year and I'm looking for some great places to come and speak.

Could I be of service to your organization? If you know someone who's responsible for booking speakers or organizing conferences, please send them my information.

In the next couple of months...

This weekend I'm running a public workshop in Toronto, The 5 3/4 Questions You've Been Avoiding. It's in support of Facilitators Without Borders - and I'd love to see you there. You can find out more details here.

In June I'll be in three amazing cities in Europe, Prague, Helsinki, and Istanbul. Check out the details.

About Michael

Michael Bungay Stanier is the guy behind The Possibility Virus, an organization that provides products and services so people can have lives of fun, inspiration and action.

To learn more about his corporate offerings, see BoxOfCrayons.biz

You can find out more by contacting Michael directly at Michael@boxofcrayons.biz or +1 (416) 532-1322.

Subscribe - To subscribe to Outside the Lines click here or go to PossibilityVirus.com.

Reprint - I'd be delighted if you should wish to reprint (for free) any part of Outside the Lines in your newsletters, websites, and message boards. Simply include the following attribution:

Michael Bungay Stanier is a professional keynote speaker, the author of the best selling coaching tool, Get Unstuck & Get Going ...on the stuff that matters and the creator of Eight Irresistible Principles of Fun. A certified coach and Rhodes Scholar, he works with teams and organizations to help them do less Good Work and more Great Work.

Schedule - Outside the Lines is distributed on the 2nd and 4th Thursday of every month. Your contact information is never traded, never rented, never sold.

I send out an extra email one to three times a month detailing programs and offers.

©Box of Crayons 2007. Box of Crayons is a registered trading name of Maida CC Inc.

*Outside the Lines is read in at least 144 countries:
Afghanistan, Albania, Algeria, American Samoa, Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, Argentina, Australia, Austria, Bahamas, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Barbados, Belarus, Belgium, Belize, Benin, Bermuda, Bhutan, Bolivia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Botswana, Bouvet Island, Brazil, British Virgin Islands, Brunei, Bulgaria, Burundi, Cameroon, Canada, Cayman Islands, Chile, China, Colombia, Costa Rica, Croatia, Cuba, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Egypt, El Salvador, England, Estonia, Ethiopia, Falkland Islands, Finland, France, French Guiana, French Polynesia, Germany, Ghana, Greece, Guadeloupe, Guam, Guatemala, Honduras, Hong Kong, Hungary, Iceland, India, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Jamaica, Japan, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Lebanon, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Macau, Macedonia, Malawi, Malaysia, Maldives, Mali, Malta, Mauritius, Mexico, Morocco, Mozambique, Myanmar, Namibia, Nepal, Netherland Antilles, Netherlands, New Zealand, Niger, Nigeria, Northern Ireland, Norway, Oman, Pakistan, Panama, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Puerto Rico, Qatar, Romania, Russian Federation, Saudi Arabia, Scotland, Singapore, Slovak Republic, Slovenia, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Sri Lanka, Suriname, Sweden, Switzerland, Syria, Taiwan, Tanzania, Thailand, Trinidad and Tobago, Turkey, Uganda, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, United States, Uruguay, US Virgin Islands, Uzbekistan, Venezuela, Vietnam, Wales, Zambia, and Zimbabwe!
Did I miss your country? Let me know!