The Groove Issue 41 - Three Ways to See Things Others Miss
Welcome to the 41st issue of The Groove.
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THREE CREATIVE WAYS TO SEE THINGS OTHERS MISS
Albert Einstein used to say: “No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it”.
Tunnel vision is the loss of peripheral perspective and the person who suffers from it can only see a small part of the field. In business (and in life) this can happen for a variety of reasons: confirmation bias, fixation on one thing, physical and mental exhaustion, rigidity, and even being sensorially overwhelmed.
This hurts practices, careers, and businesses as it narrows the scope so much, that you may miss solutions to problems and creative ideas outside the possibilities of what can be done. The easiest cure to tunnel vision is to develop a wider perspective. Here are three ways to expand your field of vision:
Move Things
Still life with basket (Kitchen table) by Paul Cézanne, oil-on-canvas, 1888-1890.
I’m sure I don’t have to convince you of the value of seeing things from a new perspective, but how do you actually do that?
One way is to take a page from the playbook of legendary French artist Paul Cézanne who objected to the idea of the vanishing point or single-point perspective.
He was obsessed with new ways of modeling space and volume. His constant preoccupation was figuring out how to create a three-dimensional perception, because when we look at things in real life, our heads and our eyes move even if a tiny bit and shift the way we perceive things.
What Cézanne did was experiment repeatedly with his props and arrangements: he moved himself, he moved the fruit bowls, bottles and teacups; he moved the furniture, he rearranged it all again.
He then painted the elements of his still lifes in different sizes even if they were supposedly all in the same plane. He changed the colors, darkened the outlines, and distorted the objects as needed, creating a simultaneous visual perception of the same phenomena to provide the viewer with an aesthetic experience of depth different from those of his predecessors.
In his book Cezanne’s Composition (1943) Erle Loran diagrams the four different perspectives at work in the painting above.
This is how Cézanne invented what is now known as “universal perspective” in art and design. His work became such a reference point that even Pablo Picasso called Cézanne “the father of us all” and claimed him as “my one and only master!”
While your work may not revolve around painting fruit bowls, you can still apply Cezanne’s approach to just about anything you do.
For example, what happens if you write the next chapter of your book in a park instead of at your desk? What might happen if your next marketing campaign revolved around different elements of your company as opposed to the same basic product info you typically share?
Move things around and see where it takes you.
Walk Around
Taiichi Ohno, the father of the Toyota Production System, in the manufacturing plant in Toyota City, Japan.
People underestimate the power of something as simple as walking to see things from a different angle. It seems so easy, how could it possibly even make a difference?
Genchi Genbutsu is a key principle of the Toyota Production System. This is sometimes referred to as “go and see.” It suggests that in order to truly understand a situation, one needs to observe what is happening at the site where the work actually takes place: the genba.
Taiichi Ohno, the industrial designer and engineer creator of the Toyota Production System, used to take new graduates to the shop floor. He drew a chalk circle on the floor and the graduates would be told to stand in the circle, observe and note what they saw.
When Ohno returned, he would ask each of the graduates what they had seen, and usually getting an answer with a very narrow perspective, he would then ask them to keep observing.
Ohno was trying to imprint upon his future engineers that the only way to truly understand what happens on the shop floor was to go there and to see the issue from every angle.
Whether you are in an office, a studio or working from home, make it a habit to walk around your space. Allow your perspective to shift with you. Be present, curious and to the extent possible, try to experience things in real life and not through a screen. Do you have a team? Go to their desks. Are you alone in your space? Stand up and get out at least once a day.
Use the COBRA Method
Amy Herman is a lawyer and art historian who uses works of art to sharpen observation, analysis, and communication skills. In her phenomenal book “Visual Intelligence,” she describes one of the methodologies that she gives in her classes in order to help her students find details they missed.
COBRA stands for Camouflaged, one, break, realign and ask and it works like this: look specifically for things that may be camouflaged (or things that are hiding in plain sight), concentrate on just one task of looking (remove distractions); take a break and come back later to the search; realign your expectations of what you thought you must see, and ask someone to look with you.
Each one of the COBRA prompts can be extremely helpful in allowing you to form a different perspective to whatever problem you may need to solve.
One of the examples she uses is this 1796 portrait of George Washington by Gilbert Stuart in the image below. What unique detail do you see that jumps at you? Try using the COBRA method above.
George Washington (Lansdowne portrait) by Gilbert Stuart, oil on canvas, 1796.
The answer is the rainbow behind Washington. There are 25,000 paintings of Washington in the history of American art but only three have rainbows in them. The rainbows were added to symbolize the end of the wars and the beginning of a prosperous new country. This small detail also helps date the painting, since it was created during the last year of Washington’s presidency.
Having tunnel vision could get you to miss details in a business deal or in a contract, or it may hide lucrative opportunities sitting right in front of you.
Mastering the ability to see details up close and/or stepping back to gain a big-picture point of view can give you a competitive edge over those who can’t be bothered to amplify their perspective.
Thank you for reading this far. Looking forward to hearing from you anytime.
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