Experiencing the ViewPoint process is compared to walking through thick dark woods in the middle of the night. You have never been through this forest before. Someone told you it was good for you, much faster and much better. You finally hear enough people talking about it that you decide to go through.
Our first experience with ViewPoint is like the first trip we make through a foreign forest. The first decision I face concerns the guide. Do I take a guide along? How experienced are they as a guide? Have they ever been in this forest before? If I choose to go in alone I hope I will have enough skill and experience to guide us. Most of the people that try to go through without a guide never make it out the other side. We chose to use a guide. Even with a good guide, we often stumble and feel lost, wondering if we will ever get through. The process seems to take forever. Eventually we find our way out the other side. Hey, it really did help.
The next time or two through the process we find the journey a little easier and more enjoyable. We bring tools to light our way (past experience and skills) which act as our candles and flashlights. We quickly find familiar paths and are able to weave through the more difficult passages with greater ease. We talk things over with the guide, but don’t need their full time help. We are making it through much faster now, but are still wondering about the paths we are using. Are we taking the "right" paths? We’re still not sure why we are taking these particular paths.
However, it is not usually until the third or fourth time through the process that we notice we are not traveling through just any forest, but rather an orchard loaded with rich fruit. The first couple of times through we want to plod through or work our way around the forest. With later, more enlightened attitudes, we are ready to stop and harvest gems of insight and understanding from the ViewPoint process. Now we start to realize why the guide took us on the paths he did. We had seen our guide picking these things the first time through. We looked for them when he wasn’t around, but didn’t find too many. Now they seem to be everywhere. The value of this process just jumped an order of magnitude.
Hereafter, it is with anticipation, and not dread, that we approach opportunities to use the ViewPoint process and enjoy the rich understanding it provides. With careful, skillful practice of the ViewPoint process, our teams gain great insight and understanding of the real needs and issues. We now are continually looking for new ways to apply this process. The initially fearsome forest is no longer a foe but a frank and stimulating friend.