“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.” — Marcel Proust
Our perspective fundamentally shapes what we see as possible. Like wearing a particular pair of glasses, each perspective illuminates certain aspects of reality while obscuring others. When we’re stuck with challenging problems or conflicts, shifting to a different perspective can reveal solutions that were previously invisible. This chapter explores how questions can help us intentionally adopt new viewpoints to expand our understanding and options.
The way we frame a situation—the boundaries we place around it and the elements we include or exclude—determines what solutions will be visible to us. These questions help shift those frames.
Essential Questions:
Example in Practice:
A nonprofit organization was struggling to increase donations during economic uncertainty. Their initial frame was “How can we convince people to give more during tough times?” This frame positioned their challenge as working against economic realities.
The executive director suggested reframing with the question: “What if economic uncertainty creates unique opportunities for community support?” This new frame led to a completely different approach. Rather than apologetically asking for donations, they created a “Community Resilience Fund” that positioned giving as a way for people to take positive action during uncertain times. The campaign emphasized how local support creates stability in an unstable world.
This reframing increased donations by 27% during an economic downturn, completely countering the industry trend. By shifting from a scarcity frame to a community empowerment frame, they transformed the conversation with donors.
Application Exercise: Select a challenge you’re currently facing. Write down your current framing of the situation (what kind of problem or opportunity you think it is). Then generate at least three completely different ways to frame the same situation. For each new frame, note what different approaches become possible.
Many challenges involve multiple stakeholders with different perspectives. These questions help you temporarily adopt others’ viewpoints to gain insight and build understanding.
Essential Questions:
Example in Practice:
A product team was frustrated by what they saw as unreasonable timeline demands from the sales department. The tension was creating a toxic atmosphere and threatening product quality.
The product manager asked her team to consider, “What would have to be true for the sales team’s timeline requests to make perfect sense?” This question prompted them to investigate the sales department’s context more deeply. They discovered that sales was facing intense competitive pressure because rival companies were releasing similar products, and each week of delay was resulting in measurable lost revenue.
This perspective shift led to a collaborative problem-solving session where both teams acknowledged their constraints and developed a phased release strategy that met the most critical market needs on the sales timeline while allowing more time for secondary features. The exercise transformed an adversarial relationship into a partnership by helping each side understand the legitimate concerns of the other.
Application Exercise: Identify a relationship where you’re experiencing friction or misunderstanding. Write down how you believe the other person sees the situation. Then interview them with open-ended questions about their perspective. Note the differences between your assumptions and their actual viewpoint. What new understanding emerges?
Our default time perspective—whether focused on past, present, or future—can limit our understanding. These questions help intentionally shift between different time horizons.
Essential Questions:
Example in Practice:
A family business was debating whether to sell to a larger company offering an attractive buyout. The discussions had become circular and tense, with family members unable to reach consensus.
The business advisor suggested a time-shifting exercise, asking: “If we were to look back on this decision from 20 years in the future, what would matter most to us?” This question moved the conversation beyond immediate financial considerations to legacy concerns, family relationships, and long-term community impact.
The family ultimately decided to maintain independence but create a clearer succession plan and governance structure. The time-shifted perspective helped them recognize that while the immediate financial gain was substantial, their longer-term values were better served by maintaining control of the company their grandparents had founded.
Application Exercise: For an important decision you’re facing, create three distinct reflections: one from the perspective of the past (what history teaches), one from the immediate present (what matters now), and one from the distant future (what will have long-term significance). Note how each time perspective highlights different considerations.
Like adjusting a camera lens, we can examine situations at different levels of magnification. These questions help shift between detailed and big-picture perspectives.
Essential Questions:
Example in Practice:
A healthcare system was attempting to reduce emergency department wait times. Initial efforts focused on optimizing the triage process and adding staff during peak hours (a zoomed-in approach), but improvements were minimal.
The improvement team then asked, “What might become visible if we zoomed out to see the bigger picture?” This led them to examine patient flow throughout the entire hospital and even into the community. This zoomed-out view revealed that emergency department congestion was largely caused by delays in admitting patients to inpatient beds, which in turn was caused by delayed discharges.
By shifting scale from the emergency department to the entire patient journey, they implemented a hospital-wide discharge planning process that began at admission. This systemic approach reduced emergency wait times by 40%, far more than the emergency-focused interventions had achieved.
Application Exercise: Select a situation you’re trying to understand. First, zoom in by listing the smallest details and components. Then zoom out by identifying the system it’s part of and the broader context. Finally, note what’s visible at each scale that isn’t apparent at the others. How might combining these perspectives lead to new insights?
The Merger Integration Challenge
Two mid-sized technology companies had merged, promising synergies and market expansion. Six months after the merger, however, tensions were high and productivity was suffering. The engineering teams from the two companies were in particular conflict, with each side claiming the other’s methods were inefficient and their technologies inferior.
Traditional conflict resolution approaches had failed. Team-building exercises and appeals to the common good produced temporary improvements at best. The situation threatened to undermine the entire rationale for the merger.
The breakthrough came when an external consultant facilitated a structured perspective-shifting exercise. Instead of trying to resolve the specific technical disagreements, she asked a series of questions that fundamentally shifted how each team viewed the situation:
First, she had each team respond to: “If you had to make the strongest possible case for the other team’s approach, what would it be?” This forced each group to find merit in the opposing perspective, something they had actively resisted doing.
Next, she shifted time perspectives with: “How might engineers five years from now, who joined after the merger, view this conflict?” This question helped everyone see how invested they were in their pre-merger identities and how irrelevant these distinctions would become over time.
Then she asked both teams to shift scales: “If we zoom out beyond your teams to customers, how do they experience this conflict, and what do they actually care about?” This question revealed that customers valued integration and reliability far more than the specific technical approaches either team was defending.
Finally, she used a frame-shifting question: “What if we viewed this not as a battle between competing approaches but as a design challenge to create something better than either company had before?” This reframing transformed the interaction from adversarial to collaborative.
The perspective-shifting session led to a joint task force charged with creating new engineering standards that incorporated the strengths of both companies. Within three months, the teams had developed an integrated approach that outperformed either of the original methods. More importantly, the process of developing this solution built relationships across the former company boundaries.
The Lesson:
This case demonstrates how shifting perspectives can break impasses when direct conflict resolution fails. By temporarily adopting different viewpoints, the teams were able to see beyond their entrenched positions to discover common ground and new possibilities. The questions didn’t change the underlying technical realities, but they dramatically changed how those realities were perceived and what solutions became visible.
Effective perspective-shifting follows this questioning sequence:
This framework helps ensure you’re not trapped in a single perspective that limits your understanding and options. By intentionally adopting different viewpoints, you can discover solutions invisible from your default perspective.
Five Questions to Transform Your Perspective:
In the next chapter, we’ll explore how to craft questions themselves more effectively, examining the techniques that make certain questions particularly powerful for generating insight and catalyzing change.
Next Page: Chapter 8: Question Formulation Techniques