Avoiding the blind spots
Assemble the right advisers to maximize your chances of success.
By Fred Koury
November 2006
Sometimes as CEOs, we are expected to have all the answers. Pride won’t let us tell someone that we don’t. We feel like we have to know more than our employees or our peers.
You may be the CEO, but you can’t know everything, and it’s unrealistic for anyone, including yourself, to expect you to. Part of being an effective leader is acknowledging that you have blind spots and that you need others to help you avoid them.
Wisdom comes from an abundance of counselors, so it’s important that you put together a good team to help you achieve your goals. Identify a weakness and then hire someone who is strong in that area to compensate.
Assembling the right team to advise you requires effort and expense. Here are a few guidelines.
- Invest in people.
You have to spend the time mentoring potential leaders in your organization so they fully understand what you are trying to achieve. They can’t help you get there if they don’t know where you are going. Spend money to give them the training they need to fill in their own blind spots to make them more complete leaders.
- Treat them the way you want them treating others.
You set the tone in the organization. The way you treat your team members is the way they will treat others. If you seek out their advice, they will seek out the advice of others, as well, giving you an even broader source of potential solutions.
- Bring in outside advisers.
No matter how good your internal team is, it’s possible for everyone to share the same blind spot or simply get caught up in the excitement of growth opportunities. Get someone from the outside — your accountant or lawyer for example — to give you an unbiased opinion. They may be able to see something from the outside that you can’t see from the inside.
When your team is assembled, you have to make use of it. Let everyone express their ideas and discuss the pros and cons of each, but most important, leave room for everyone to disagree.
Ultimately, you are responsible for the final decision. You may choose to go with the majority of your advisers, or you may choose to go in your own direction. But if you have the right team, you can at least rest easy that you’ve heard all the pertinent facts and made a decision that maximizes your chances for success.
