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The moment you walk into a problem space with a box of tools and techniques, the problem presents you with something your toolbox can’t fix. Tools and techniques alone aren’t enough to deal with the real world.

— Hillel Glazer

The Remarkable Insight, Power, and Value of Having Many Perspectives

I’m excited to share with you an interview with my good friend and colleague, Hillel Glazer. I’ve known Hillel for 10 years and during that time we worked together on many engagements and flew on many flights together because we’re both pilots. He’s one of the best consultants I have ever known or worked with and in the “left seat” of a plane, he’s one of the best.

What many people don’t know about Hillel is that he has this uncanny ability to rapidly understand what’s going on in a company, and what needs to be done to improve performance. It would amaze me because sometimes he came up with his findings in a matter of days or hours and sometimes within minutes! He intuitively and seemingly almost effortlessly sees things no one else can see.

Recently, I had the opportunity to get together with Hillel for a conversation. Since it had been a few years since we last talked, I had gained some perspective on what it was like working with him. The first question I eagerly asked him was, “Hillel, how do you do what you do and how did it start?”

I think you’ll find his responses very fascinating and instructive. Here is what he had to say:

“Early in my career, I was thrown into lots of situations where there was let’s just say not a lot of consistency or clarity on or between what was asked of the people to do and what they were being given to do.”

“I was working in a government capacity in acquisition and very young just out of college, and I was sent to go check on suppliers of what we were purchasing. It didn’t take long to realize that the contracts were written in a way that was extremely constraining. There were not a lot of positive incentives to either party. To be honest, the contracts were a lose-lose.”

“The government wasn’t going to get the best value. The supplier wasn’t going to get the best profit margin or really have a reason to do well. Then that all trickled down to the people doing the work. They were always the ones that ended up taking the brunt of these bad management decisions for lack of a better term. But really it does boil down to it’s not their fault that they have to work like this. They have to make up for the shortcomings in how their leadership, the position that they put their leadership put them in, and how the leadership decided that they were going to win this work. It didn’t matter that it was a lose-lose.”

“Ironically, at the same time, my first boss handed me a stack of books on Total Quality Management (TQM). So it was a bit of cognitive dissonance for me to be told by my supervising manager to get smart on TQM and Lean and try to bring that to the table when we work on projects with suppliers.”

“Then I’m seeing how the suppliers are set up to fail. The government wasn’t getting the best thing it could possibly get. And so right out of college, I’m being shown these are the best ways to work. And then I’m being sent off into situations where it’s the polar opposite of what’s the best way to work. And I think that grew a sensitivity in me to recognize that cognitive dissonance. What it looks like on people in their body language, in their faces, and in their response to questions in how they’re open to learning. How they think or don’t think in terms of systems thinking. Are they afraid to speak up? Are they afraid to make mistakes and learn from them? Are they given everything they need to get the job done? You can tell after a while when they’re not and you can tell when they’re trying too hard to prove a point that they are having trouble proving and we realize that the reason they’re working so hard is that they have to make up a story about it because it’s not really happening.”

“That was a bit of an eye-opening experience straight out of going from academia into the working world. I may have had some innate capabilities there to really be sensitive to people and situations, but I definitely credit that early indoctrination into, on one hand, here’s what we think is the best way to do it and we know this is the best way to work. And on the other hand, we’re making it impossible to achieve that. And honestly, I don’t think that’s improved in the 30 years since I went to the workplace.”

Hillel had a lot more insight and wisdom to share as we continued the conversation when I interviewed him for Forward Thinking Workplaces.

Get the highlights and most intriguing insights from my interview with Hillel at Why Do We Go to Great Lengths to Do Things Right Yet Make It Impossible to Achieve?

In January, we’ll publish the podcast and full interview transcript. And in an upcoming Forward Thinking Workplaces workshop, I’ll invite Hillel to join us for what I know will be a riveting and exciting session.

Until then, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with Hillel at hillel@hillelglazer.com or me with any questions. We’d love to hear your takeaways from the interview.

To your forward-thinking life & great success!

— Bill

Our current perspective is creating our reality. Until we make an effort to take a different perspective, not much is going to change.

— Bill Fox

The view from above

“Wow – what a beautiful view!” was one of several responses I received when I posted this picture below on a social media site.

I took this picture with my iPhone while piloting a Cessna Skyhawk on my return trip from Pennsylvania back to Virginia.

At the time, I was flying over the Susquehanna River south of Harrisburg, PA. 

Of course, the view was even more stunning from the plane.

But here’s the sad fact that I have become painfully aware of:

Most people on the ground have no idea what possibilities are revealed when their situation is viewed from a higher perspective.

Most of us are so immersed in the details of our lives that we never see the possibilities.

We focus only on what we see right in front of us, or on what happened last week, or on what we think or fear might happen in the future.

But what if we chose to take a more reflective perspective?

What if we were able to hold a higher vision?

What would we notice? And what different choices would we make?

But here’s the important point I want to want to make:

Our current perspective is creating our reality. Until we make an effort to take a different perspective, not much will change—no matter what else we do.

We often focus on what’s right in front of us that we never allow ourselves to consider a more reflective perspective—the kind of higher perspective that would enable us to create what we truly want and open ourselves up to new possibilities.

Rather than shifting our perspective—at least periodically—we instead focus on getting all the different parts of our current reality to work more effectively and efficiently.

And we wind up making the same choices that everybody else is choosing because they say it’s right. We are not choosing for ourselves.

Sadly, I see this all the time in my work with helping organizations improve. They adopt one methodology or way of doing business that everyone else is choosing—and, more often than not, they experience repeated failures or marginal results.

They don’t allow people to collaborate and to co-create something even better.

So how do we get a new perspective to create something different and better?

Flying on an airplane is a beautiful way to shift your vantage point. But you don’t have to be up at 3,000 feet to gain a new perspective.

The best way I know to gain a new perspective on the ground is by asking questions.

But this is important: 

Don’t try to answer the questions immediately. The questions themselves will change your energy and allow you to become more aware of the possibilities that can show up unexpectedly.

What kind of questions?

In her book, Conversational Intelligence®️, the late Judith Glaser says that the highest form of questions are discovery questions. According to Judith:

“Discovery questions open our minds to explore new avenues of thought with each other. They help us enter each other’s worlds, navigate each other’s thoughts and feelings, and open and harvest new insights and wisdom not yet explored by either person.”

Try these questions that happen to be a few of my favorites:

• What would it take for you to feel more engaged?
• What else is possible?
• What does wisdom move me to do next?
• How could this turn out better than we ever imagined?

Now it’s your turn

What’s your best question for getting a new perspective?

Please share an example of a question that opened up a new possibility for you.

Please email bill@billfox.co if you’d like to share.

To your forward thinking life & success!
⏤ Bill

Bill Fox, Author, and Founder at Space Beyond Boundaries and Forward Thinking Workplaces.