Are you too close to the bark on a tree to see the forest?

 In Globulus Blog

Can this happen?  Does it happen often? The answer is all too often, yes!

How does this apply to the directions of my business, or how my customers see me?

I spent 35 years inside corporate america, with duties at various levels of front line to executive management.  My scope of engagements ranged from retail, oil field work, customer care, sales, marketing, operations, project management, strategic planning, M&A to supply chain.

For the last 2 years I’ve been working @ Globulus with customers on their blind spots.   Clients range from 25 employees to 10K or more.   We work thru assessment, solutions and implementation of initiatives based on the specific needs and opportunities identified in assessment/solutions stages.  There are times of simple fixes, and other installations that require complete overall. Small, or big, changes can be transformational to the trajectory of the business.

With both inside and outside prospectives, I believe the inside perspectives are all too often looking at the bark of tree, and not the forest.  This is not always the businesses fault.  Often they believe they are seeing the entire forest, because they are not told otherwise by “yes” people, or business is going fine (but not to the greatest potential).

The business can produce silo’ed faults, which is one person fixing an issue, but causing a problem in another area, producing the famous “Whac-A-Mole”. Unfortunately, customers are the ones that suffer from this effort.   The business might think they are seeing End to End views from the customer’s perspective, but in reality they are yet another silo.  As McKinsey & Company recently pointed out some of this in an article, “Are you really listening to what your customers are saying?”.  Can your customer’s show you the forest?  Are you listening?

The forest is often much larger than your internal lens provides you.  You may see more than just the bark of one tree, but looking at the forest from an external perspective, its much larger than you realize.  Your impacts are broader and deeper than you expect.

You should see that both bad, and good in that fact. The opportunities for improvement and growth are great!  The opportunities of poor service or reputation are equally great, but bad!

Is your business seizing the opportunities of the entire forest, or are you stuck? Let me know your thoughts, or if you need help.  Contact me here.

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