Middle Market Leaders, Agribusiness, NGOs, CEO, CFO and Board os Directors

Turbulent times like today create good or bad Black Swans for the prepared and the unprepared. So I am updating for you what I learned both anticipating good and bad Black Swans and either helping scale good Black Swans or remediate bad Black Swans.

Who will rebound with some great opportunity? Some always do.  Why not you?

A colleague last year had an unprepared Black Swan event. Theirs was the bad version.  They were doing well helping on grain exports out of the Ukraine through Poland versus the dangerous Black Sea. Great opportunity UNTIL Poland stopped that path after complaints from their farmers re the impact on them.

On that note, ask yourself, "Why bother to discover your blind spots?" Simply enough, consider the next step after finding your million dollar blind spots is to move to increase opportunities and revenues, and decrease risks or costs.

Consider these 3 observations executive teams apply after discovering their blind spots, and how you can also apply them to your organization:

1.  Major blind spots can both have good upsides and bad downsides

2.  Some major blind spots are clearly unexpected and defensible.

3.  Some are easy to see using hindsight, as the world is now prone to do.

Unfortunately, too many organizations seem surprised that they could be surprised.

Before you decide how to classify efforts to evaluate your organization's abilities on this point, apply the following 3 questions to your ERM, contingency planning or strategic update processes:

1.  When does the claim about blind spots become more of an excuse  than a defensible statement?

2.  What is the monetary risk threshold that must be crossed before  anyone should care?

3.  What is the impact, cost, and loss of recognition you will suffer from being in denial about your blind spots?

And of course, be truthful with yourself in answering these 3 questions to gain the greatest insight! Or maybe you should still create some flexibility on savings to reallocate resources.

Either way, maybe worth a call to discuss 678-319-4739.

Gary Patterson

Author of Million Dollar Blind Spots: 20/20 Vision for Financial Growth - Empowering growth through leverage you did not know you had.