When distance creates new perspectives

Many people step back during the summer to rest. But distance does something else as well.

It exposes us to different people, different environments, and different ways of looking at the world. What felt familiar becomes open to question. What seemed fixed reveals new possibilities.

In our conversations with boards and executive teams, we often notice something similar. New strategic insights rarely emerge in the middle of daily activity. They appear when people step outside familiar routines long enough to see their organization from a different vantage point. Not because the strategy is wrong, but because distance creates room for new signals, different perspectives, and questions that would otherwise remain hidden in the pace of everyday decision-making.

This is often where strategic curiosity begins. Not in the search for immediate answers, but in the willingness to look again. To reconsider what has become familiar. To notice possibilities that may have been present all along but were difficult to see from within the logic of the current direction. New directions rarely emerge from the same perspectives that shaped the current one.

Stepping back can make it possible to move forward differently.

What new perspectives might emerge if you created more distance?
And what might you see differently as a result?