Take a step back

I've had cause to work with an advocate recently. Clever man. Unassuming. Someone who has the ability to see the whole picture.

After seeing him take a long term view on a project, with an eye on the outcome which could be a three year process if not managed properly, I wondered about my own sense of stepping back.

The kind of stepping back that makes you see the complete situation. Even three, five or 10 years down the line.

Advocates are taught to do this as a matter of course. Another one once told me that a really good advocate is someone who asks the questions, but already knows the answers. Our lives happen so quickly and so seamlessly, from one day into the next that it is difficult to hear the questions, never mind figure out the answers. As Ashleigh Brillaint once wrote: "I try to take it one day at a time, but sometimes three or four attack me at once."

Really good golfers can do this. They plot their way around the course:  "Hit the drive to there. Hit the second shot from the left hand side of the fairway to open up the pin. Leave an up hill putt."

So here's the question: can we take a step (or 72 - whichever number it is for you to see the WHOLE picture) back, and see it holistically, wholly and completely? The cause and effect, from go to wow. All in one piece.

I struggle with that, but then I figure a lot  of us do because we are really just too close to it all. That's where the step (or 72) back is a sobering thought. Just saw a review for a book which espouses the idea of "four seconds." You have to take four seconds to react to everything. But what if the call were to be: "Take four steps back?"

Kicked this idea around with a Boeing pilot friend of mine. He said: "Yep, makes sense. Sometimes when the pilot and the co  are so close to the problem, the navigator steps in from the back and says: 'Think about it this way perhaps?' Happens often."

Why? Because he was just far back enough to see it for what it was worth. He was not too close. How can one possibly see all the pitfalls if you are too close to it? Put the situation in focus and see the next move. Strategy to anticipate an outcome.  Surely that's why a paint splattered artist steps back from the canvas that he was working on? To behold the whole effect.

I am determined to be my own advocate. My own artists, golfer.

To see the whole picture. As the economists say: take the long term view. Now all I have to do is figure out how many steps I have to take back.