The saying goes that there are always two sides to every story. Every now and then, people will say that there are three sides: one person’s view, another person’s view and then the truth. All these views can make communication difficult and views can be skewed. So what happens when there are six different views on the same situation?
It gets complicated quickly.
Canon has shown us how a little different perspective can change everything. The camera making company invited six photographers to take photos of the same man, but every photographer got a different backstory to the man: a self-made millionaire, a lifesaver, an ex-con, a fisherman, a physic and a recovering alcoholic.
The photos that resulted were vastly different. The fisherman photo looks relaxed and blue collar, the physic looks like he’s always in thought and the ex-con picture has heavy shadows and simply looks mean. All pictures of the same guy, all vastly different perspectives.
Photography doesn’t have a whole lot to do with the trucking business, but the story that Canon is telling is bigger than photography. The story is all about perspective and perspective is key in communication.
My perspective of a situation while sitting in Buffalo Lake might be vastly different than yours while driving down the interstate in Florida. The key cogs at the origin of a load and the main people at the destination might have different views. The dispatch office might have a different view of things than the billing office. And it goes on and on.
Canon only had six photographers with different outlooks. In the trucking business, there are a lot of voices and all of those voices have to work in darn-near perfect harmony to get the job done which makes communication essential.
As Kottke Trucking grows, we need to keep communication between everyone clear and concise. To be the best trucking company, from top to bottom, we need to have the best communication with each other, on every level, in the entire industry.
We might not all see the man as a millionaire or an ex-con or a fisherman. We all have many things that affect the way we see life, but we can still try to see the world from other perspectives. The practice of doing so will make everyone’s job easier.
Everybody has different angles in life, but that’s okay as long as we are all focused in on the same goal.
Here’s the video of Cannon’s perspective experiment:
Great article! Perspective is so important!