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In his usual humorous personal reflection style, Ivan Scheier points out that we can accomplish so much more if we're willing to step back from a situation and discover a new perspective on it. Traditional approaches won't work everywhere and volunteer program managers need to be flexible and creative. Here is one passage:

"I remember trying to recruit church volunteers for regular, one-to-one visits with jail inmates. I wasn't having much luck, until I realized that my broader, "real" or "true" goal was not one-to-one visits. It was, instead, providing healthy outside contact and influence for inmates and possibly, too, friends outside when they did get out of jail. Once I realized this, it was easy to see that pairs or small groups of volunteers could visit with one inmate and achieve the same goal - maybe better. On that basis, I started getting plenty of volunteers. Good people who were probably somewhat uneasy about solo visits in an unfamiliar and quite threatening environment, could now stand "back to back," so to speak.

I also remember a group trying unsuccessfully to get a grant to buy playground equipment for a community park. Finally getting un-fixated on the grant method - children can't play on grants - they realized that a combination of community fundraising and donated equipment might do the trick - and it did."

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