In the middle of our economic meltdown, some calling it the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression, I keep thinking, “How did we miss it?”

We live in a time when the complexity of cause and effect, supercharged by globalization and technology, make the ability to understand consequences of actions more challenging than ever. Now throw in the voices of leaders in business and government who keep saying, “This way!  No. That way!” and you create a situation where we’re in perpetual emergency reaction mode on all fronts, dealing with consequences all the time and rarely the causes.

We will not survive by just reacting or by being pulled this way and that by people who sell us the next set of solutions coming from their all-knowing think tanks and committees populated by the same people who didn’t see this coming.

Let me make a modest appeal to all in leadership and to us at the street level. It’s a starting point for learning to live in a world where this sort of chaos and complexity is the new normal. We need to recover and develop the discipline of reflection and perspective. The ability to reflect and have perspective has been killed by the intrusive noise generated by the over-scheduled and over-communicated life of the modern leader. We are constantly in a reaction mode to either a crisis, an interruption, or the chime of an email that’s just landed in the in-box.

So how do we get back the ability to reflect and have perspective?

1.  Develop a clear sense of your personal purpose and values as well as that of your organization. Purpose gives you navigational bearing and priorities when the storm blows in. Without it, you are just reacting to the waves and the winds. And understand that purpose, as I’m talking about, is not self interest, but an understanding of how I answer the question, “What positive difference am I making in this world, individually and organizationally.” This sense of purpose is also an antidote to the prevailing pride and arrogance of so many leaders. True purpose or calling can only be attended with deep humility.

2.   Get a change of scenery. Computer pioneer, Alan Kay wrote “Point of view is worth 80 IQ points.” And a point of view comes from having perspective, a way of seeing into a problem, not just seeing from within a problem. The challenge is that if our perspective comes from within a group of people all caught up in the problem itself — whether it is Wall Street or Washington — there will not be ANY perspective no matter how much they claim to understand.

Liz Claman writes about perspective, the ability to keep your head when everyone else is losing theirs, in Warren Buffett and David Sokol: Smartest Guys in the  Room. She points to a conversation she had with Buffett in which she asked him why he doesn’t live in New York City, the so-called “Financial Capital of the World.” He answered, “Liz, I chose to stay in Omaha rather than New York because by the time the clock struck noon on any given day, I’d had 19 ‘great tips’ whispered in my ear and none of them were really great.”

Claman concludes, “By staying away, he’s gotten closer than anyone else on the planet to what all those guys on Wall Street really want: Money and Success.”

Cultivate friends and colleagues who aren’t caught up in it all. Don’t breathlessly work to become a privileged insider. You could just be entering into their own myopic group-think. Just ask yourself if anyone in your group exhibits independent perspective — or is your group all about those seductively whispered “19 great tips” that you can’t get anywhere else except in your exclusive group.

3. Cultivate a heart for God and an ear for God’s wisdom. The ultimate outside-in perspective on human affairs comes from God. That’s why the Bible tell us that “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge…” (Proverbs 1:7).  What comes alive for me as I read this are the passages that follow in verses 20-33.  In these lines, wisdom is personified as a woman standing in the middle of the marketplace, at the intersection of Main Street and Wall Street, and she shouts out to all offering, not the hot stock pick of the day or the latest breaking news from the Fed, but Wisdom!  Unfortunately, her sad conclusion is:

24 But since you rejected me when I called
and no one gave heed when I stretched out my hand,

25 since you ignored all my advice
and would not accept my rebuke,

26 I in turn will laugh at your disaster;
I will mock when calamity overtakes you-

27 when calamity overtakes you like a storm,
when disaster sweeps over you like a whirlwind,
when distress and trouble overwhelm you.

28 “Then they will call to me but I will not answer;
they will look for me but will not find me.

29 Since they hated knowledge
and did not choose to fear the LORD,

30 since they would not accept my advice
and spurned my rebuke,

31 they will eat the fruit of their ways
and be filled with the fruit of their schemes.

32 For the waywardness of the simple will kill them,
and the complacency of fools will destroy them;

33 but whoever listens to me will live in safety
and be at ease, without fear of harm.”

Now is the time to quiet our hearts; to find time to get off the grid each day; to open our hearts to God, and then open the Scriptures to read, listen, think, and learn.

We may call it perspective or foresight today. But it’s long been called wisdom. Get it at any price. Our lives depend on it.