Andrea Belk Olson Three Chronic Leadership Blind Spots Thwarting Success
Organizational leaders aren’t infallible. They make mistakes. They miss things. They have blind spots. Sometimes blindspots are easy to reveal, while others persist despite evidence to the contrary. Why is this the case? The problem is, some blind spots are baked in by organizational pressures, which in turn, perpetuate seemingly indefinitely. These chronic blind spots are the toughest ones to eliminate.
In almost every company, there are three key blind spots leaders unintentionally have that consistently hold their organizations back from achieving the audacious goals they set forth, undermine team trust, and erode the culture from the inside out.
Here they are in no particular order:
The Time Blind spot – How much time should your organization spend on innovation, change, or improvement efforts? Most leaders respond by focusing on specific parts of the process — committing the team to spend, say, 20 hours spread over six or seven weeks with clear high-level outcomes. But how do we know if 20 hours is sufficient or insufficient? We have to pick a number, and put a box around the activity, to avoid it becoming an endless endeavor. Yet, leaders often obsess about the time rather than the outcome. If it was really about time, why 20 hours? Why not 40? Or 400?
Time should be measured not on its face, but relative to other organizational investments of time AND the outcomes you want to achieve. For example, consider how much leadership time, per week, is spent in meetings. The most common answer is 40–50% of one’s time, i.e., 16–20 hours per week. If you compare the outcomes of the 20 innovation hours over 6–7 weeks with 96–140 hours of meetings attended during that same time, which do you think delivers more value to the organization? This is the time blind spot: that 3 hours per week on innovation is somehow more wasteful than 16 hours per week in meetings. In addition, the outcome of the time invested in innovation likely will have a larger and more sustained impact on the organization’s success.
The Positioning Blindspot – Consider a time whereas a leader, you cut corners to save upfront time and money, and found yourself buried in costly downstream problems. Was this a poor choice or just bad luck? While most leaders would never choose to take the harder path, that’s exactly what we do when we don’t consider choice positioning. One way to visualize this is through the lens of billiards. We become so focused on making the first shot that we fail to consider how we position the ball for the next shot. When we go to take the next shot, it’s harder than it had to be. We win the moment at the cost of the decade. In the process, the smallest shock causes massive damage.
Yet this is the positioning blindspot. We don’t want to look like an idiot when times are good even if doing so offers an unstoppable advantage when times are tough. But good times eventually come to an end and being in a position to capitalize when times are bad requires doing different things when times are good. Leaders should try to always put their organization in the best position possible no matter the future conditions. Not only does this mean avoiding costly problems, but putting the organization in a position to perpetually play offense.
The Priority Blindspot – Consider a leader who has a new idea they want to explore, and shifts the team’s efforts towards this new area. Or they identify a problem that they feel needs fixing immediately. Sometimes that’s good. Why don’t we launch two campuses at once? Why don’t we start a podcast and see if anything happens? Discontent with the status quo, after all, is the impetus to change. But not all discontent is holy – this is the priority blindspot.
Sometimes discontent comes from having a bad day, being moody, or just deciding something on the spur of the moment. Leaders who behave this way almost always reverse their decision the next day or the next week. Or bump what was priority #1 down to priority #32 because it just isn’t as important anymore. That’s not only frustrating for people, but disrupts organizational efficiency, focus, and momentum. Just because you’re upset about something as a leader doesn’t mean it should become the top priority of the organization.
Take the time to evaluate your blind spots, and better understand how they’re impacting your effectiveness as a leader, and the success of your organization. You might be unintentionally thwarting your own success.
About the Author
Andrea Belk Olson is a speaker, author, applied behavioral scientist, and customer-centricity expert. As the CEO of Pragmadik, she helps organizations of all sizes, from small businesses to Fortune 500, and has served as an outside consultant for EY and McKinsey. Andrea is the author of The Customer Mission: Why it’s time to cut the $*&% and get back to the business of understanding customers, No Disruptions: The future for mid-market manufacturing, and her upcoming book, What To Ask, coming in June 2022.
She is a 4-time ADDY® award winner and host of the popular Customer Mission podcast. Her thoughts have been continually featured in news sources such as Chief Executive Magazine, Entrepreneur Magazine, The Financial Brand, SMPS Marketer, Rotman Magazine, and more. Andrea is a sought-after keynote speaker at conferences and corporate events throughout the world. She is a visiting lecturer and startup coach at the University of Iowa, a TEDx presenter, and TEDx speaker coach. She is also a mentor at the University of Iowa Venture School.
More information is also available on www.pragmadik.com and www.andreabelkolson.com.
