It’s time to discover your blind spots

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: The CEO was a highly-qualified and experienced person. He had returned to India over three years ago to start a company with his own funds. For family reasons, he had set up his company in a town about 100 miles from Bangalore. He was now struggling to grow beyond the initial customer or two. Customers weren’t comfortable doing business with a company located in that town; payments took more time than usual; it was hard to recruit talented people in the smaller town; communication infrastructure wasn’t the best, resulting in loss of efficiency and productivity. It was hard to find people in his town who were aware and knowledgeable about how things worked in national and international business. And that there was no PR firm in his city to help generate visibility for his company. In short, according to him, the reason he was struggling had everything to do with the location of his company.

In the course of the conversation, he also mentioned that his company had built a fairly unique solution for its only real customer; that his customer, a large multi-billion dollar company, was very happy with him and his company; that the customer was in a specific industry vertical that required certifications and regulatory clearances to enter; that there were several other large companies in that vertical; that his communication network had improved drastically in the last few months; that two of his family members were involved in senior positions in the company; that his employee attrition was almost zero; that his banker was a well-known private bank with a very large network.

So was it really true that the location of the company adversely affected its prospects or was it something else? Had he leveraged his relationship with his customer adequately—in getting more business, seeking endorsements to secure other customers in the same industry? Were his family members the right people for the jobs they were performing? Had he talked with his bank to understand how money transfers were to be effected so that his account could get credited could be realised almost immediately upon receipt of the monies in India? Had he networked with industry associations and groups in his town? Had he used the Internet and the Web to reach out to potential prospects who could all be well-targeted given the industry vertical?

Turned out that the CEO had done none of the above.