Watch Your Blind Side!

“Blind Side” the movie is based on the true story of Michael Oher, now with the Baltimore Ravens, who earlier in life was befriended by a school friend’s mother, played by Academy Award-winning actress Sandra Bullock. Other plays offensive tackle for his school’s team and does a truly impressive job protecting his quarterback’s blind side.

There’s another kind of blind side worthy of our attention: “blind sides” that are responsible for the demise of leaders and their institutions, families and friends, communities and economies – like blind sides that contributed to the latest recession, our worst in decades. It’s pretty frightening to hear the likes of Alan Greenspan, past and current secretaries of our treasury and the heads of world-wide banks – no doubt pretty smart people in many respects – admit that they were blind to the forces at play that triggered the collapse of world-wide real estate and financial markets and that nearly took down our economy. There are other kinds of blind sides that get us into trouble too – blindness to our own or our organization’s strengths or vulnerabilities, to others’ contributions or limitations, to the impact of our behavior or decisions on others, to “bad news” or our inability to hear it, and myriad other realities that impact our lives and organizations without any awareness of them.

We’ve heard a lot about the merits of “authentic” leaders, organizations, experiences and people. Authenticity means to be real, and an important part of that is for leaders, organizations, experiences and people to be in reality what they claim or present themselves to be. Another important part of being real, however, is the capacity to face and articulate reality – something apparently in very short supply as CEOs, investment bankers and government officials missed or ignored warning signs of the market’s collapse leading up to 2008. The signs were surely there; Michael Lewis’ new book, The Big Short*, chronicles the work of Michael Burry, one investor who correctly read the signs. Mr. Burry studiously read all of the real estate investment descriptions laced with legal language and strange acronyms; he paid attention to the increasing ease for homeowners of acquiring credit, and noticed by 2005 that lending standards had hit bottom. Adding it all up, Burry bet that millions of dollars worth of securities would lose money by “short-selling” them; he made billions.

Why did Michael Burry pay attention to what was happening when so many others didn’t? He jokes about how it might be due to seeing things differently since the childhood loss of one eye; whether that’s true or not, certainly “seeing things differently” is one way to protect our “blind side.” A way to do that just on our own is to simply adopt a different perspective and see things from as many different angles as we can; examples include “playing devil’s advocate,” waiting a day to see things in a different light, or changing locations or going on a retreat to gain perspective. An even better way is to seek and use the input of others, and the more and more different the perspectives usually, the better; here’s a case where there truly is strength in numbers.

The road to failure is paved with blind spots, including organizations and entire industries blind to market or competitive dynamics. After dominating the auto market, Henry Ford lost significant market share to General Motors early in the twentieth century because he was blind to shifting consumer tastes; demand for “basic transportation” gave way to preferences for different models with more features and more colors. The entire American automotive industry was blind to the encroaching Japanese auto makers’ inroads, eventually losing nearly half of their collective market share. IBM was thrown off balance in the 1970s and 80s, blind to the possibility that small personal computers, and Apple in particular, would amount to much. Sometimes rapid growth, success or size contributes to blind spots, as was apparently true with giant organizations in 2008 believed to be “too big to fail.” Richard Tedlow does an excellent job of documenting classic cases of denial, a close cousin of blind sides, in his new book Denial.*

A scary thing about blind sides is that whatever they’re obscuring is still there, impacting our lives and organizations whether we’re aware of them or not; that’s why they’re called “blind sides!” Unfortunately, sometimes we learn about blind sides when it’s too late – after a crisis, traumatic losses or digging a hole that’s too big to escape. I know that I’ve been blind at times to the reality of what was going on or to my situation when a better understanding of what was blocking my view would have paid many dividends. Things “just not going our way” again and again or finding ourselves falling into the same predicaments consistently are usually signs of blind sides and our inability or unwillingness to face certain truths. These are times when we need to take some time for serious reflection, seek feedback that we really attend to, and open ourselves up or seek experiences to help us see things from a different perspective; valid personality surveys, skills inventories or “360°surveys for individuals, especially when accompanied by coaching, can help here. Perhaps at times like these we need what the Buddhists refer to as a Kalyana mitra, or “noble friend”, who as John O’Donahue tells us in Anam Cara* “will not accept pretension but will gently and firmly confront you with your own blindness.” Organizations and teams can be blind to their strengths and vulnerabilities as well; here again periodic organization assessments, especially accompanied by skillful interpretation by a consultant, can significantly reduce dangerous blind spots.

We all likely have sufficiently serious personal, professional, organizational and community challenges to resolve without being handicapped by blind spots.

  • Are there any indicators that blind spots may be impacting your life or work; how could you find out? What are some steps you could take to compensate for potential blind spots?
  • Might there be blind spots impacting others around you – perhaps acquaintances, your organization, industry or community? How could you call attention to them and reduce their impact?

“Ninety percent of the world’s woes come from people not knowing themselves, their abilities, their frailties and even their real virtues.” (Sydney Harris)

Simple Side Business Ideas

These days it is really not that uncommon for some people to have one or two or even three jobs. And this is not only because they just want to keep their families afloat, some are just basically willing to make certain sacrifices – like giving up sleeping and their free time just to be able to work their way to the top. However, all work and no play will certainly make anyone go insane so while it is perfectly okay for you to consider having side business ideas, it certainly will not hurt you either to make sure that you choose the one that will be perfect for you.

As long as you are not too picky and you have a wide range of interests and skills, then you can easily take your pick from the many side business ideas that are going around out there.

If you are a stay-at-home mom, some great side business ideas that you can do – even from your home are:

-At-home telemarketing: just simply set your own office, make use of your computer, your internet knowhow and your headset and start making those calls.

-Freelancing: got great writing skills? Lots of companies are looking for freelance writers to outsource to help them with their many marketing projects especially with SEO.

-Transcribing: all you really need is to be able to type fast and have good hearing to ace this.

If you are a student, here are some great side business ideas that you can easily do during your spare time and still be able to focus on your studies:

-Freelance researcher: make the most of the researching skills that you have acquired from school and make yourself useful to companies who are looking for freelance researchers that they can outsource to help them do their extra work. Work time is flexible, you can take as many assignments as you can handle and take a break whenever you feel that you won’t have the time for it.

-Freelance creative writer: have a knack for writing creatively? If you have a way of easily convincing people through the sheer power of the written word, they you should consider other freelancing gigs like that of a freelance writer. Side business ideas like that of freelancers are great for students like you who need to be able to have a decent schedule to be able to still ace his or her schooling. Just make sure that you have a portfolio of your sample works ready once your prospects start calling you up.

And whether you are a struggling employee, a stay-at-home mom or a student, one surefire way to get the big bucks rolling in is to make the effort to put up a multi-level marketing business that you can do from your home. You can easily research on the internet for possible product ideas and sales and marketing schemes that you can make use of to have a successful multi marketing business.

Improve the Delivery Side of Your Business With a Hyper Local Delivery App

India is turning out to be a hotbed for hyper-local delivery services that are either mobile-or web-based serving millions of users like never before. This year, a lot of brands including Google launched their own app-based local services platform and the services may range anything from food delivery, grocery, logistics services, home services, pharmacy to cashless transactions. The evolution of “Digital India” has only accelerated the efforts leading to a more flexible, service-oriented, solution-focussed and transparent business model in the web-and mobile-based e-commerce sector. As they start to grow, they seem to solve more of the existing local issues. Generating trust amongst customers with respect to the delivery segment is one of the biggest challenges that drive the major players to be active in the market.

With most apps in this niche, you can establish your product, menus, payment gateway, delivery schedule and set up the various branding elements such as logo, colour scheme, etc. You can change the look and feel of your store the way you want. This allows greater control over your orders, product delivery and business in general. As store customization is fast and easy, just with the click of a button, it requires no coding skills, developer or programming team on the part of the service provider.

A few apps are loaded with GPS-based routing and optimisation which means you can access it from anywhere and create routes and plans easily. Efficient delivery is supported by Automatic Order Consolidation and Deliverer Performance Optimisation feature in some mobile apps. Most apps offer service companies with end-to-end dedicated support and customisation.

Any app-based service firms looking to integrate delivery services should look if it can collect information from its POS/Website/App, optimize the delivery system through Route & Deployment feature, one-screen interface and access to all major delivery companies, interface with CRM through Point and Click type interface and capability to hire and organize/manage staff directly from one’s platform.

Most apps, these days, utilize propriety technology to augment the delivery end of business with no capital investment for app installation required at the user end, without any need to depend on on-demand delivery companies with options to build one’s own delivery network.

The ability of the hyper local delivery app to connect with a user’s POS or Web CMS is a welcome feature. This means a company does not have to look for multiple platforms for different features. The delivery app’s API should integrate with major POS systems available at the marketplace. It should be easily customizable with the existing user’s app features to suit requirements.

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