Identifying Business Blind Spots For A Better Tomorrow

 

As a business owner and leader, you have an inherent bias towards your own enterprise. If you didn’t, you probably wouldn’t be leading it. After all, to remain competitive you need to have confidence in yourself, and to believe you’re worth taking up a certain market share.

It’s important to prevent this confidence from ever blossoming into arrogance. Now, most businesses are quite good at this, and in fact integrate robust customer complain procedures to ensure they can make any negative experience right. Some even take proactive steps such as offering full refunds on first purchases in case a client or customer isn’t happy - this value-added approach shows a sense of real goodwill that will no doubt be appreciated.

So far, so good. But being proactive and listening isn’t always the same thing as noticing a blind spot, the same as good road traffic conduct might not help a truck driver see a smaller car driving alongside them due to mirror positioning. With that said, let’s consider how you might go about this process:

Uncovering Those Hidden Biases

A bias can lead you to believe something that isn’t true, not because you’re unintelligent or dismissive, but because some of the axioms you’re working with are faulty or outdated. In business, this can take many forms. For example, it might be that you haven’t particularly targeted a given market because you assume they wouldn’t be interested. But without verifiable data to prove that, then it’s hard to really consider the outcome. 

It might be that in your state, the second largest buyer of ballet shoes is from bald men with construction jobs in their late 40s, just trying on a new and delicate side hobby after work. Of course, that’s quite a funny example, but it’s not out of the realm of possibility. In some cases, our assumption that “certain people” might not be into what we have to offer can plainly shove them into a box, when individuals are as complex as the systems you use to run your business in the first place.

Security & Accountability

It’s quite easy to assume that as long as you have security measures in place, your chance of losing inventory or suffering intrusions are very unlikely. But that’s not always the case, and security is nothing if not bound by accountability. For example, an RFID warehouse tracking system can help you keep better control over your inventory to make sure none of it’s stolen or even stored in the incorrect areas, allowing you to keep a common count of everything on the books with diligence. In simpler terms, your policies won’t lead to a blind spot where you fail to see through the cracks of those policies and remeasure your approach in kind.

Robust, Constantly Honest Customer Feedback

One of the best influences any business can have is that of honest, perhaps even brutally sincere customer feedback. It’s not hard to see why - often this can make very clear an experience that you hadn’t even considered when a consumer uses your firm. Even if you disagree, it’s good to be very considerate about how they arrived at that position.

In some respects, you might not even be able to disagree, for example, if a customer feels as though they were discriminated against, then that can set off massive alarm bells as you seek to rectify the situation. Here you see that encouraging honest reviews, even if they’re negative, can be more instructive than a 5-star rating on sights like Trustpilot, as that approach helps flag issues well in advance.

Sharp Competitor Analysis

“Competitor analysis” is just a smart word for “seeing what my competition is up to.” You can bet that a great deal of this has taken place and will have taken place since the COVID pandemic ravaged businesses and industry sectors worldwide. Since then, better and more robust planning has gone into ensuring a better outcome should a likely scenario ever happen again. Moreover, investments in agility, such as being able to utilize production centers for alternate means where appropriate, will have been planned. Considering how your competitors coped with such pressures and stressors may give you the insight to change your own direction in the future. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel for every single business decision you make after all, you just have to use the smartest possible logic, make that your own where suitable, and run with it.

With this advice, you’re certain to identify those business blind spots you may not yet have seen.