Take a slightly different perspective...

This post covers a couple of things really; on the one hand it is an observation of the relationship between traffic in town and children and on the other it's 'titbit' for anyone running a business. Naturally some photography shoehorns itself in here as the tool of illustration!Here's the thing: I am perpetually stunned at how parents will allow their children to stand so close to the curb. It freaks me out a bit. The traffic through any town can be horrendous and in the old market style towns with narrow pavements and streets the proximity of vehicles is often too close. Also, the type of vehicle can range from a nippy runabout to the thundering lorries struggling to turn the corners.On top of the 'children close to the curb' paranoia is the 'buggy out front' syndrome. Again, breathtaking danger can be witnessed daily at child buggies right up to the curb with the adult standing behind.To offer some illustration I took some photos from the POV of a four year old child. I checked the average height in the UK, about 105cm and set my camera on a monopod so all the photos were consistent. Then I crouched close to the curbs around my home town. Not scientific and nothing too dramatic but let's look at the child's POV...My personal point and message with this short post, is to raise awareness with parents not to forget that your child is seeing things much closer to the gutter. Adults often complain about traffic but the level of intimidation in tight fitting towns is amplified for kids. I sometimes wonder of distraught 'buggy bound' children are distraught because they think they're about to get squashed!Moving away from the preaching (I know it's a be presumptuously preachy, but there you go!) here's my connection to business. Many of us attend business meetings and seminars and groups and workshops and lectures and lifestories and ...well you know what I mean, but sometimes all we need to do is just change our perspective a tiny bit. Not much usually, just enough to see things from someone else's point of view. Maybe our perspective of what we do is just off kilter a fraction, just out of sync with our potential customers a smidge.The difference between failure and success may simply be to crouch down for a moment and see things from someone else's point of view.