Removing Our Blinders

Blinders restrict our fields of vision.

Sometimes, blinders are helpful, perhaps necessary. When we need to focus intensely, minimizing distractions, blinders are very helpful. Imagine a founder, building an innovative new product, Purposely putting on blinders, eliminating distractions, perhaps ignoring naysayers can be critical to the successful launch of the product. Or if we are launching a major new initiative in our GTM strategies. Putting on blinders, temporarily, increases our focus and ability to implement and execute a strategy. Even something like writing this post, I have to close every other window on my computer, even turn off the music playing in the background. I want to focus only on this post.

But at some point blinders are limiting, in fact dangerous. We miss important disruptions to our business. We miss important opportunities.

Let me revert, for a moment to an example. On a racing track, we want the horse we are riding focused only on the track ahead. Any distraction would impact their performance. But riding, at full speed, on a winding trail or on unknown terrain, blinders create a danger. They restrict the horse from seeing and reacting to what’s happening in the moment.

Reflecting on that example, we conclude, the greater the uncertainty, potential for disruption, or change, the more attentive we have to be to everything going on. Blindly speeding forward doing what we have always done, could be the wrong thing, even endangering our abilities to achieve our goals.

As goal focused as we may be, as useful as the blinders might be, at the moment, every once in a while we have to stop and look around.

Have things changed? Has something changed with our customers and their current buying initiative? Are there other changes within the customer that may impact us? Has something changed about the competition and what they are doing? Has something changed in our markets? Have we made shifts within the organization? Changes/disruption can appear anywhere and at any time, impacting what we are doing unless we are paying attention.

• Sometimes the way we have always done things become blinders. We become so fixated in what we have always done, we never consider, “Is there a better way?”
• Sometimes, the way we do things and the way others in our markets do things become blinders. We are blind to the possibility of change and this blindness is reinforced by our confirmation bias.
• Sometimes “just good enough” is a blinder (this is possibly redundant to the first item. We are meeting our goals, but fail to recognize we could be doing better, performing at a much higher level.
• Sometimes the failure to look in different places blinds us. My least favorite sentences usually begin with, “In SaaS/Tech………” These usually end in very insular views of how to achieve goals. For example, one of the most interesting “critical issues” in this segment is, “As we move from subscription based models to consumption based models, how do we comp our people?” There is a lot of hand wringing and debate in figuring out the best approach. I asked a CRO in a multi billion electronic components business about this. He responded, “What’s the big deal, we figured that out over 30 years ago.” This is commonplace in any embedded products, basic materials, CPG, some professional/financial services and more. It is an issue they solved decades ago (though they continue to adapt and improve). But it is unthinkable for those in the SaaS/Tech space to look outside their sector. And in fairness, we see similar biases, though on other issues in other sectors.

I’ll stop here. But how do we start to remove the blinders seeing things differently, or seeing them for what they really are. Some thoughts:

1. Always be asking, “Can we do better?” It’s a distinctly different question than “Can we do more?”
2. Leaders spend more time watching their people do the work? See where they struggle, See what they can improve?
3. Read your website/materials, through the eyes of your customers.
4. Spend more time with your customers, not talking to them about you can sell to them, but learning how they view their organizations, businesses, markets. Learn how they think, learn what they think about.
5. Spent time understanding your customers. Not just from a product/feature comparison, but try to understand their business strategies, how they get work done, how they work with customers. Hang out where they hang out see what they talk to each other about, see what language, terms they use.
6. Spend time talking to complementary suppliers. Understand their views of markets/customers/trends/changes. Understand how they are addressing certain issues.
7. Spend time looking at industries/markets in very different segments than those you participate in. Make it as distant and different as possible. Look at how they do things, look at how their businesses organizations work. Look at how they innovate and change. Try to find something that you can take from one they do and see how you might adapt it to what you do. The most important point is to look at very different industries/markets. Think for instance, how a company of jazz improvisationalists builds their business and goes to their markets. Think of how they innovate and change. What lessons can you learn and adapt to your business. For doubters, we have done this exact exercise with very large technology, professional services, industrial products companies with stunning results.
8. Constantly be experimenting. Try new ideas. Try crazy ideas. None is a waste of time, but gives you different ways of thinking of things.
9. Get into a debate with ChatGPT or your favorite LLM. Don’t go to it looking for answers, have it tell you the flaws in your thinking, or to add 5 different points of view, or to offer a counterargument, or to take a perspective very different than you might have. Then, with each of its responses, push back. Force it to rethink it’s response.
10. Read very diversely. Like the previous point you will learn more if you read outside selling/business. Look at history, economics, biographies, sociology, great literature. There are always ideas that you can learn and adapt to what you and your organization do.
11. Listen and talk to people with very different ideas and experiences. See what you can learn from them. See how you can adapt and change.
12. Be willing to admit that you may be wrong. Or at least open to the possibility that there might be a different way.

What have I missed? Are there areas of blindness that I’m blind to? Are there suggestions I may have missed?

Afterword:  This is the AI generated discussion this post.  The structure of these discussions has changed a little.  The first 6 minutes is an overview discussion, the remaining time goes more deeply into a few critical issues.  Always fun discussions, Enjoy!