Leadership in Action: Issues and Observation—Taking the Balcony View

MAKING SPACE

The first essential ingredient of taking a balcony perspective is time. You have to make space in your workday to live and breathe the rarefied air of the balcony. Most leaders need to schedule the time to do this. Unless you are a most unusual executive, it is too easy for other matters—some important and some not—to encroach on this time. Why? Because for most executives, viewing events from the balcony is the hardest work they do. They are not sure how to do it, it often doesn't look or feel productive to them, and they don't feel competent at or confident about it. Unfortunately, the latter perception is often accurate, but leaders can get better at taking the balcony perspective.

The cardinal rule of behavior change is to start ...