As your organization plans for the future, how do you identify potential blind spots? It’s a Baldrige question that high-performing organizations typically answer with comprehensive approaches to finding, collecting, and analyzing information about their industries.

If you do this, you’re in good shape because you know the road that lies before you, the twists and turns, the hills to climb and the straightaways. You can proceed confidently toward your destination—unless a boulder blindsides you.

That boulder rolled out of a blind spot. It’s impossible to anticipate, but organizations can do a better job of recognizing when they are in boulder territory. In “Six Ways to Prevent Corporate Tunnel Vision,” Adrian Ott lists six questions you can ask to uncover hidden risks and opportunities. (Fast Company, April 5, 2010)

Can a competitor with a new business model explode the economics of your industry? The incumbent business model can feel like the way things are done until a better model blows it up.

Do you evaluate the same competitors now as you did three years ago? Companies are expanding into new markets—and those markets may include yours.

Can your category be simplified? Companies like Southwest and Costco have succeeded b simplifying what they offer.

How well do you evaluate the broader customer context independent of your products? Evaluate your customers from a 360 degree view including sequential tasks and simultaneous activity.

Do you regularly seek the next wave of technology or methods to serve customers, even when they will make your current products obsolete? Think  Blockbuster and Netflix.

Do you have the same channel partner portfolio mix as three years ago? In this case, think Facebook, Google, and Paypal.

Ott concludes with a final question: Is your current team capable of providing a perspective beyond current industry paradigms? If not, consider expanding the team that does strategic planning to include people who might have insights into these six questions.

To read more about strategic planning, click on these articles:

• Developing Agility on 3 Fronts
• Find Your Blue Ocean
• Where to Play and How to Win
• Making Your Organization Adaptable
• Anticipating Disruptive Change

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