I've long since given up publishing regular blog posts - weekly, monthly, whatever. Some people even do it daily. It can become a ritual where you are in danger of writing something even if the finished result wasn't worth the effort. These days it takes an event, or a number of happenings, to stimulate me into action. This time it was a critical review of one of my previous posts - Whatever Happened to the Balance Scorecard? - as well as cleaning my spectacles and an excellent post by Humberto Mariotti - Why "philosophical consulting"? - that were the catalysts for this post.
The critic of my post on the Balanced Scorecard (BSC), questioned my credentials as an 'expert' on the subject, even though I had never made such a claim. It got me thinking about perspective - point of view. Clearly my perspective was different to my critic's but could either be described as 'expert'. There is no doubt they are different and I suggest there could be many more. In some respects the *points* of view were very similar in that we were both viewing the usefulness of the BSC from a business perspective but our experiences had been quite different, which had led to entirely different *perceptions*. I will return to the notion of perception later in this post.
The next event of significance to this post was the cleaning of my spectacles. My wife has an ultrasonic jewellery cleaner and when she was using it recently, she asked me if I would like to clean my spectacles, which I did. The result was staggering. Whilst I clean my specs from time to time using a cloth, I know they had not been thoroughly cleaned for years and I had been thinking I needed my eyes testing and a new prescription. But when I tried the newly-cleaned glasses it was as though the varifocal lenses were to a new prescription, fully compensating for my eye defects. I viewed my surroundings with far greater clarity. At this point, I thought of writing a post, which I'm glad I didn't, using the clean spectacles as a simple example of differing perspectives. It could have been used as a model to try to explain variations in 'points of view', by viewing the world with different 'lenses'. But I was in danger of falling into the trap of trying to explain complex behaviours with a simple model, which from my experience rarely works. Indeed, that could be the major flaw with the Balanced Scorecard!
The final event that prompted me to write this post was when I read Humbert Mariotti's post on "philosophical consulting". Humberto explains how dangerous it is to make decisions by analysis alone but rather we should use a combination of analytical and intuitive/perceptive thinking. He explains how difficult this is because from an early age we are taught and encouraged to use analysis (rather than synthesis) to understand and solve problems.
These three events prompted me to think (and write) about perspectives because when examining perspectives, like the BSC example, we tend to be driven by our analytical prowess. Yes it is important to understand different perspectives, the different 'lenses' that people use to view life's complexities. But *perspective* is different from *perception*. Perspective refers to a point of view, whereas perception refers to interpretation through awareness. Different perspectives help us to create our perceptions. Perception is not about embracing a single perspective. It is an integration of different, ideas, values, attributes and experiences, which give rise to an insight.
So what about my example of life's 'lenses'? Too simple, I'm afraid because to understand different *perceptions* using that rudimentary model would involve exploring and integrating the vision from a plethora of interdependent 'lenses', which destroys the simplicity of the model.
It's yet more food for thought!
