Management | Bhavin Gandhi's Blog

How to innovate with less resources?

Regardless of what kind of business you run, small or large, you always have to keep on innovating, otherwise your business will become irrelevant in no time. But when times are tough and when you don’t have much money to spend, how do you still keep your commitment to innovate more? Thus, through this blogpost, I am going to provide you with few suggestions using which you can innovate on a tight budget.

Involve customers throughout: Your customers are your best critique. Thus, you should involve them throughout the product life cycle. Rather than wasting your money on getting the second-hand market data or hiring focus groups, you must engage directly with your customers in their natural settings. Involve your existing customers with your R&D teams to unearth new or unmet needs. Interact with users in new market segments by actively involving customers in new product design processes, as well as tracking customers’ use of the product after purchase. The focus on customer needs will enable R&D to replace its costly and scattershot approach to product development with more efficient, user-focused investment.

Seek cheaper solutions: Too often, we reinvent the wheel and end up with too complex of a product for our customers. Customers, however, are more likely to be impressed by products that solve their problems than by mere technological prowess. When you have unlimited resources at your disposal, it is easier to go overboard with your R&D efforts. But when you have very limited funds, you should be guided first and foremost by your customer insight, and produce easy-to-use offerings that may lack bells and whistles but are good enough, especially if they come at a lower price. This approach will not only help you to bring your products faster into your markets, but it will also help you in getting the faster feedback for your products in real time.

Use of crowdsourcing: If you are on a tighter budget, you should definitely look for crowdsourcing your R&D efforts. Obviously, you can’t crowd source everything due to your intellectual property rights and other concerns, but you can crowd source plausible product ideas and gauge their initial public reactions. Ideas that garner sufficient support can be then packaged with supporting data and sent to the relevant managers, who in turn signal their view of its potential to executives responsible for taking such ideas forward. You can also use social media networks, where customers reveal and share their preferences to yield a wealth of market insights at lower costs.

I hope, my blog can help you innovate new things for your business within a restricted budget. If you know any other ways through which we can innovate with less resources, then please feel free to share it here through your comments. Thanks – Bhavin Gandhi

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Posted by Bhavin Gandhi on May 18, 2016 in 21st Century, Leadership, Management

Tags: Crowdsourcing, Innovate cheaply, Innovate for less, Leadership of tomorrow, Pragmatic innovation, Think smarter

Schedule the best virtual meeting by following these rules

05 May

In my last blog, I have talked about some ways through which you can schedule a perfect virtual meeting. Thus, I will continue my discussion in this blog, and provide you with some more tips to make your next virtual meeting perfect.

Allow extra time: If you are scheduling a virtual meeting for the first time, then please schedule some extra time for dealing with the technical challenges that you might face during the meeting startup. Use this extra time to work out glitches that often occur with new technology. Over time, when your team members are familiar with login or startup procedures, you can then reduce the meeting duration by the amount of time that you might have otherwise spent on connection issues. If you have a new member joining your team, then you should arrange a trial meeting to check connections and ensure that the new member is up to speed before a larger group meeting.

Provide more lead time: The lead time required for virtual meetings might be longer than for in-person meetings, since in addition to the virtual space, you need to ensure that all participants have the necessary information about the meeting before they join in. It is your responsibility, as an organizer of the meeting, to ensure that every team member understands the goals of the meeting and has sufficient time in order to prepare for it. After all, if critical decision makers or technical experts are not prepared in the meeting due to short notice given to them, then you will end up scheduling a second meeting for the same agenda.

Provide detailed information: If you are going to organize a virtual meeting with multiple people joining in from multiple locations and through multiple means of communication (phone, video, etc.), then you need to be more detailed in your meeting requests. Meeting agenda should at least specify this information: name and contact information of the person calling the meeting, meeting purpose, meeting start time and expected duration, names of invited attendees, meeting location including connection information, phone numbers, URLs, connection passwords or login IDs, or any other information attendees need in order to participate, and list of the topics to be discussed and time limits for each topic. If you do your homework in creating your meeting agenda beforehand, then you won’t have many issues during the meeting itself.

Invite limited people: Virtual meetings are often encountered with various challenges from time differences to technology difficulties, and hence, you shouldn’t try to complicate things by inviting people who are not needed in the meeting. Make sure that you have everyone in the meeting who needs to be there, but don’t over crowd the meeting with the people who are not needed there. By inviting limited people in the meeting, you will be able to keep everyone focused on the task at hand, and there will be less of a chance for any confusion due to people talking over each other on the phone or video conference.

This is the end of my two part blog about scheduling a perfect virtual meeting. I hope, these advises can help you in scheduling your ideal meetings. If you have any recommendations from your side, then please feel free to share it here through your comments. Thanks – Bhavin Gandhi

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Posted by Bhavin Gandhi on May 5, 2016 in 21st Century, Leadership, Management, technology, Virtual Team

Tags: Remote team meetings, Schedule conference calls, Schedule virtual meeting, Virtual meetings, Virtual Team, Work remotely

How to schedule a perfect virtual meeting?

21 Apr

Other day, I was attending this virtual meeting, and within 5 minutes in the meeting, I realized that some of the key stakeholders wouldn’t be able to make this meeting due to their time zone difference. Within 10 minutes into the meeting, I also realized that other participants were not well prepared, and we might have to convene some other day to discuss these same action items.

Obviously, scheduling a perfect in-person meeting also requires some level of preparation, but to schedule a perfect virtual meeting is a challenge in itself. You don’t just need to make sure that the meeting agenda is well defined and thought out, but you also need to handle logistics challenges imposed by difference in time zones and technology limitations. Thus, in this blog, I will provide you with few tips through which you can schedule your perfect virtual meeting.

Be agenda ready: Whether your meeting is virtual or in person, you should always have a well-defined agenda for your meeting, which should be clearly stated in the meeting request itself. If, for whatever reason, you can’t explicitly mention your agenda in the meeting request, you should send out an email to all the participants with this information beforehand. This approach will not only help your participants to set some basic expectations about the output of this meeting, but it will also help you to make sure that your participants are prepared beforehand with the desired information, so that they can respond to your questions and come up to some kind of an agreement.

Keep time in mind: Whenever you are scheduling a virtual meeting, you need to always be aware of different time zones from which your attendees will attend this meeting. After all, you won’t be attending a meeting at 3am in the morning, unless it is very important, right? Same goes for your meeting attendees. They are not going to put an extra effort to attend your meeting at 3am in the morning, just because it is convenient for you. Thus, before scheduling the meeting search for your attendee’s time zones and schedule the meeting at appropriate time.

Share the pain: Sometimes, due to the vast time difference between two virtual teams, it is impossible to schedule these meetings within the regular working hours (8am to 5pm) of both the teams. And hence, it is very important to share the inconvenience across your team rather than always have the same person/team meeting before breakfast or late in the evening. If you have to schedule regular meetings across multiple time zones, then you should rotate the pain across the board by changing the team each week that has to stay late to attend the meeting.

I hope, this blog can help you in scheduling a perfect virtual meeting for your team. In my next blog, I will provide you with some more insight into how to schedule your virtual meetings better, but in the meanwhile if you have any recommendations from your side, then please feel free to share it here through your comments. Thanks – Bhavin Gandhi

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Posted by Bhavin Gandhi on April 21, 2016 in 21st Century, Leadership, Management, technology, Virtual Team

Tags: 21st Century Management, Management of tomorrow, Online meetings, Perfect virtual meeting, Remote team meetings, Schedule conference calls, Schedule meeting

What should you look for when hiring someone in your virtual team?

06 Apr

Virtual Teams are slightly different from your normal teams, and hence, they require slightly different skill-sets from your team members. Working in a virtual team is not for everyone, only certain types of individual can perform well in a totally remote team. They should be highly motivated, enthusiastic, and flexible. Thus, it becomes very important to hire someone who can work effectively with minimal supervision than hiring someone who is familiar with a particular toolset. And hence, I would like to provide you with some tips through which you can assess the personal qualities and the tools experience of a candidate during his/her interview.

Technology competence: If you are hiring someone who can work remotely, then you need to make sure that she is comfortable with technology. You can perform a simple test during the interview itself to gauge the competence of the candidate with technology. Just set up the interview using the technologies that you would use when working with the team, such as VoIP, web cams, email, instant messaging, and so on. It will quickly become apparent how comfortable the candidates are with working with the technology and how they handle it when things go wrong.

Self-accountability: Here is where the behavioral and scenario-based questions come into play. You should ask very specific questions which can help you understand how the candidate reacts to a big problem and how she holds herself accountable for the work that she does. You can ask questions such as… How do you organize your workspace? How do you plan your day? How do you keep up with the office when you are traveling for work? How do you manage distractions when working from home/office? What types of distractions are the most difficult for you to overcome? Etc. With these questions, you are trying to find out if the candidate can work on their own, or will they require hand holding to perform their basic tasks. After all, working in remote team is no joke.

Ability to work remotely: Once the candidate answers your questions, ask more detailed questions that examine the candidate’s motivations and behaviors. It is very important to find out how comfortable is the candidate with working remotely. Ask specific examples about the time when the candidate has worked remotely. Tell them to elaborate on their experience. For example: How was your experience working remotely? Was it positive or negative? What did you not like about that experience? What organization techniques have you implemented to identify your priorities? When working virtually, how do you establish a rapport with teammates you have never met? By asking these questions, you are trying to figure out if the candidate is comfortable working remotely, and how she will fit in your remote work culture.

Synergy with your team: As with any hiring decision, skills alone are not enough to ensure that a candidate will be successful on your team. The candidates must also possess personality and character traits that fit with the other team members. If you have a choice between someone who is knowledgeable but obviously difficult and someone who is less experienced but enthusiastic, consider choosing the less-experienced-but-enthusiastic person. You will likely have far fewer personnel issues, and may get someone who will build team synergy.

I hope, my blog can help you find the right candidate for your virtual team. If you know any other ways through which we can improve the hiring process for a virtual team member, then please feel free to share it here. Thanks – Bhavin Gandhi

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Posted by Bhavin Gandhi on April 6, 2016 in 21st Century, Leadership, Management, Virtual Team

Tags: Hire someone, Hiring of tomorrow, Interview strategy, New recruit, Recruiting process, Remote Teams, Virtual meetings, Virtual Team

Motivation techniques that don’t cost you a fortune

24 Mar

I have seen and managed many employees over the years. And through my experience, I have realized one thing; money is not even the primary factor of motivation for the people who work for you. For some employees, the new healthcare plan might be the perfect motivation boost, while for others the same exact plan might prove to be depressing. No one can find out the perfect formula for motivating everyone, but you can try to implement some practical solutions through which you can motivate majority of your team. Thus, in this blog I will talk about some practical ways to motivate your employees without breaking your bank.

Be positive: No one can make you motivated or demotivated about something. Only your own thoughts can make you happy or sad. In the same manner, no one can make your employees sad or demotivated; their own thoughts make them demotivated. So, when your employees come to you for finding the meaning of the new directive or the new process change, then it’s your duty to give a positive meaning to that new initiative. If you keep positive attitude towards your work, and if you keep yourself motivated at work, then you can create a butterfly effect of positive attitude around you. After all, people feel motivated only when they think motivated thoughts. Thoughts rule, circumstances do not. The closer your relationship to that truth, the better.

Tell the truth: Great leaders are always transparent with their team. They share a common habit of telling the truth to their team, faster than their other counterparts. Though, as managers, we won’t be able to tell every confidential matter to our team, we should at least try to be as transparent as we can. There are some managers who tell their team – “There’s nothing I can do” or “I am helpless and powerless”. It might be partially true in some situations, but you can always do something better. Even if you don’t have answers to your employee’s question, you can always ask someone and get the answer for them, and communicate those to your employees. If you remain transparent to your people and try to involve them in decision making, then you will never have to worry about motivating your team.

Care about the individual: Some managers are more of a project managers than a people manager. They think that there is nothing more important than meeting our team’s objectives. And when we meet our team’s goals, motivation comes inherently since the team recognizes that they have contributed towards this goal. Even though I agree that meeting team’s objectives are very critical for the business, making sure that your team recognizes their contribution in this big picture, is even more important. As a manager, you shouldn’t just concentrate on your business priorities, but you should also try to understand the mindset of each individual in your team. Try to stop by their desk everyday, and if that is not physically possible, then try to IM or Mail them every single day to find out if they need any help. After all, we are all humans, and no matter how far we have come, we still value personal interactions more than anything else.

I hope, my blog can help you motivate your employees. If you know any other ways through which we can motivate our employees without money, then please feel free to share it here. Thanks – Bhavin Gandhi

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Posted by Bhavin Gandhi on March 24, 2016 in 21st Century, Leadership, Management

Tags: 21st century, Encourage your employees, Improve employee engagement, Leadership of tomorrow, Motivation techniques, Soft rewards

How to clear your mind and think?

07 Mar

In today’s day and age, when we are surrounded by so many things from mission critical problems to materialistic things, it is difficult to clear your mind. When your job is to put out fires everyday, it is very challenging to clear your mind. After all, how do you find time to think, when you are so occupied already? But at the same time, ignoring the need for thinking allows seemingly healthy, active businesses to fail because of the change they never saw coming, until it was too late. Thus, as a leader, we need to develop a habit of stepping away from our day-to-day activities, and clear our mind. Hence, I am writing this blog to provide you with some pointers through which you can manage to clear your mind, while managing your busy schedule at the same time.

Block your calendars: As a leader/manager, we are used to organize our day through Outlook or Gmail calendar. Then why don’t we use the same mechanism to remind ourselves about clearing our mind for a while? This is the least we can do for ourselves, right? So before another week goes by, clean your schedule for hour or so, and make sure that you keep this meeting with yourself. During these thirty minutes, think. Don’t write, read magazines, or clean your desk. Just think. It would be great if you could do it with your office door close and your computer shut down. Avoid normal distractions, which would otherwise lead you to a different path.

Change your environment: I am sometimes tired of sitting in my office, and I often look for a change to clear my mind. There is no easier way to do that than just taking a walk. A short walk of half an hour provides a great thinking environment for me, and I encourage you guys to try it as well. And yes, during your thinking time, try not to question your mind with a day-to-day problem, although this works well for that, too, but try to think about general stuff or changing environment. For example: What’s changing in my environment that I haven’t thought about? What new skills will my team need in the next year? What barriers exist to my team’s success this quarter? Etc.

Try new things: As a leader, we are often occupied with a routine, where all of our activities are predefined and we follow a same schedule. From playing golf to hanging out with our friends, we become used to a same routine. As a leader, we shouldn’t just challenge our work, but we should also challenge ourselves to get out of our comfort zone. Thus, we should try to go to a museum, an art gallery, or a library. Or just visit a mall without any intension of shopping or fly a kite. At the end of your excursion ask yourself, What did I see or experience today that taught me something about my work or my life? Don’t push for the answer, but don’t give up too quickly. There’s always something there; you just need to think till you find it.

I hope, my blog can help you not only clear your mind but develop a practice in your life to think outside the box. If you have any other recommendations, then please feel free to share it here. Thanks – Bhavin Gandhi

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Posted by Bhavin Gandhi on March 7, 2016 in 21st Century, Leadership, Management

Tags: 21st Century Management, Challenge yourself, Clear your mind, Leadership, Mind yoga, Self leadership, Self learning

How to be a rock star at your workplace?

09 Feb

Success Have you ever felt unable to get your point across at your workplace? Or have you ever wondered why people don’t take you seriously at work? Not everyone feels that way, but if you do, then please read on. Recently, one of my friend talked to me about her insecurities at work, and how she can’t seem to perform well at her work due to her insecurities. So, I thought of writing this blog which can help many people like her to become a rock star at their workplace.

Give credit to yourself: If you don’t credit yourself for your work, then why do you think others will. I understand, many folks are honestly intimidated by large crowds and their superiors. But there is nothing wrong with giving yourself some credit on the work that you have already done. By publicizing your work to your superiors and decision makers, you are not doing anything wrong, you are just providing them with some facts about your work. If you develop a habit of advertising the work that you (or your team) does, then when impacts to potential strategies are being discussed, I am sure that your name will pop-up as the subject matter expert (SME).

Be positive: By being positive, I am not telling you to agree with all the decisions that are being made at your work place, but I am rather recommending you to change your perspective towards how you see things. If you want to be seen as a collaborative problem solver, and not as someone who has to be “convinced” all the time, then please try using phrases like – “Sure that sounds interesting. Let me do some research and get back to you” instead of using phrases like – “No, we can’t do that”. In this way, you are aligning yourself with the crowd instead of setting yourself up as a roadblock, all without being a yes-man.

Build trust: This is easier said than done. Building trust is a long process. You can’t force someone to trust you. You need to demonstrate your integrity to your coworkers to build the trust relationship between you and them. Thus, you should always try to be transparent with your coworkers. Try not to participate in any gossip or spread rumors about decisions that are not done deals; likewise do not divulge confidential information. How many times have you heard rumors about a strategic decision being made that in the end was not true? If you want to earn people’s trust then then you need to pay attention and use some discretion. Just treat others, the way you would like to be treated. Period.

I hope, my blog can help you become the next rock star at your workplace. If you have any other recommendations for my readers, then please feel free to share it here through your comments. Thanks – Bhavin Gandhi

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Posted by Bhavin Gandhi on February 9, 2016 in 21st Century, Leadership, Management

Tags: Leadership, Personal Branding, Rockstar at work, Rule your workplace, Sell yourself, Top performer

Motivation mistakes that many managers make

02 Sep

There are many motivation techniques that a manager can use to motivate his/her employees. Unfortunately, managers are so busy in managing tasks than managing people that they would rather concentrate on making their employees happy than dealing with real issues and guiding them to success. Thus, in this blog I will talk about some of the common mistakes that managers make while motivating their employees.

Give them more money: Most managers and leaders think that if we pay enough money, we can find people who will do almost any job. And hence, most managers believe that when they give bonuses to reward their employee’s past performance, they will usually become very happy, unless they were expecting a larger bonus. Money is definitely a motivating factors for some, however, this happiness is short-lived. Within few months, your employees will have difficulty in recalling that bonus and it might not have the same impact that it did within the first few weeks of receiving it.

Ignore conflicts: Most of the managers are concerned about being liked by their employees. Though it is a good thing to be liked by your workforce, it is not always going to be possible. People have differences, and hence, you will also have conflicts with your employees at some point in time. Unfortunately, many managers try to ignore these kind of conflicts at any cost, because they don’t want to ruin their relationships with their employees. Some managers would rather “let something go” or “sweep under the rug” than make an issue out of it. This practice is not going to lead you anywhere. If you keep on avoiding conflicts for long time, your employees will think that you don’t have any power, and they can do whatever they feel like, and it will eventually poison your relationship with your employees anyways.

Keep them happy: I have seen many managers, who will often go to great lengths to keep their employees happy. As a manager, you should always be invested in your employees, its your job. But that doesn’t mean that you have to go through great pain just to make your employees happy. I have seen many managers, who offer game rooms for their employees, or an early day off on every second Friday, or company paid lunches every other week. The theory behind all of these actions is – if you keep your employees happy, it will translate into increased motivation and productivity. Unfortunately, this is not very effective in practice. If you provide frequent benefits like these, your employees might get used to it, and this practice will become the accepted culture within your team, where some of your employees will continuously abuse these benefits.

Some are not motivated: Most managers believe that their poor performers are just lazy, and not motivated enough to do the job. This is a very common misconception that most managers have. As a human being, we are all motivated to do something, but our reasons for motivation can differ. Walking through the offices, the manager may see someone playing computer games or sending personal e-mail, this could be seen as the individual is not motivated because he’s not attending to the job tasks. But that may not be entirely correct. At that moment, the “aimless” employee is motivated, perhaps even highly motivated. But that motivation is not work directed, nor is it productive for the company.

No motivation for smartest: Some managers believe that their top performers don’t need to be motivated; since they are very quick to learn new things, and adapt to new technologies, they don’t require any other motivation. Unfortunately, these managers are completely wrong. Intelligence and self-motivation do not necessarily go hand-in-hand. You might have a smart employee who hasn’t been able to find out just what motivates her personally, and hence, she might get bored or frustrated easily. As a result she might lose her interest in her work, which will reduce her productivity eventually.

I hope, my blog can help you find out some of the ineffective motivational techniques that you might be using, unknowingly. Let me know, if you can think of any other motivational techniques, which are hurting your employees rather than helping them. Thanks – Bhavin Gandhi

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Posted by Bhavin Gandhi on September 2, 2015 in 21st Century, Leadership, Management

Tags: 21st century, Confront your employees, Ineffective employee engagement, Keep employees happy, Leadership of tomorrow, Manage people not tasks, Management, Money doesn't motivate, Motivation mistakes

What should you communicate about promotion to your employees?

18 Aug

To most employees, promotions are often mysterious. They often feel that some people rise quickly based on who they know rather than what they know. Unfortunately, this might be true for some organization, this assumption is not accurate for all situations. Actually, most managers don’t provide their employees with enough information about their promotion, and hence, their employees always feel that their promotion is purely based on luck (or lottery). Thus, as a manager, we need to help clear up their confusion by providing clear answers to their questions. In this blog, I will provide you with some tips through which you can prepare yourself to answer their questions.

Get your basics clear: Before you talk with your employees about their promotion, you should do your research. For example: Look at your organizational guidelines for promotions. Identify how people are chosen for promotion within your organization. Does your organization use their values as a primary screening tool for advancement, or does job-specific competency supersede all other considerations? Are your policies administered uniformly, or are they bent on a regular basis? Does who you know matter more than what you know? Once you have a clear picture of your organization’s practices, then only you can talk to your employees regarding their promotion opportunities.

Help them learn: No matter which position or field your employee works in, he/she needs technical competencies in both hard and soft skill area. Some employees might already have few of these skill-sets that you might be looking for in the next position, while some employees might lack these skills. As a manager, you need to make your employees understand that they need to take charge of their own skill development for their promotion. And if they need any kind of a support for that, then you are available to help them. You can display your support by informing them about various skill development programs that your company already offers, or by providing him/her with the opportunity to learn on the job through a mentor.

Provide regular feedback: Most projects and tasks at work are not just about getting the job done, they are about how you go about getting that job done, too. Your employees can be very intelligent, but if they can’t work well in a team or if they always carry a negative attitude towards their job, then this is going to hinder their promotion chances, isn’t it? Unfortunately, some employees don’t even realize that their behavior is hurting them, and that’s where you come in. As a manager, you need to ensure that all of your employees are given regular feedback, not just once a year at review time. Whenever you have promotion communication with your employees, make sure that you talk about how their attitudes are perceived throughout the organization. If your employees need some help in changing their behavior then try to help them by providing avenues through which they can match their behaviors with the organization’s values, so that they can get that promotion quickly.

Once you are clear about your company policies, and once you become transparent to your employees about their strengths and weaknesses, and try to help them increase their skills to get that next promotion, then only your promotion communication with your employees will become natural and more easier.

Would you discuss anything else with your employees during these promotion talks? If so, please share it with me through your comments here. Thanks – Bhavin Gandhi

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Posted by Bhavin Gandhi on August 18, 2015 in 21st Century, Leadership, Management

Tags: 21st century, Employee engagement, Employee feedback, Employee promotions, Job performance, Job promotion, Leadership of tomorrow, Management, Performance communication

How to eliminate your organization’s blind spots?

03 Aug

Like Kodak, Xerox and Black Berry, we can all become blind sided by our own success. And as I have mentioned in my last blog, there are many organizational strengths that can turn into blind spots, if we don’t give them close attention. Thus, in this blog, I am going to provide you with some pointers through which you can keep reinventing your organization, and don’t become the victim of your own success.

Think outside the box: Even though your business is doing excellent, you should always keep looking for improvement opportunities around you, and keep yourself open to change. Make sure to frequently ask these questions to yourself: What business are we in? How do we create value? Who are our new competitors? Where is our market heading? What new behaviors our customers are displaying? Etc. If you have the budget for it, make sure to hire third party contractors every other year to provide their overall opinion on the company’s products, services and overall health. This practice will not only give you an outsider’s unbiased opinion, but it might also give you some improvement opportunities existing within the organization at this time. If you don’t have that much extra cash to spend on, you should at least have the meeting within your senior leadership, twice (or thrice) a year, and ask these specific questions. You will be surprised on what you find out.

Encourage disruptive behavior: In order to continually improve your existing and established processes, you need to create a disruptive culture within your organization, which can help you motivate your employees and encourage them to think outside the box. Obviously, this cultural change is not an overnight process, neither there is a magic wand that can make this happen faster. Some of the subtle ways through which you can implement this cultural change are.. (1) Go undercover. Keep aside one day in a quarter, where you cancel all of your meetings for a day, and let your employees give you the work orders for a day. This approach will not only help you to improve your repo with your employees, but it will also help you identify all of the inefficiencies in your existing processes. (2) Encourage your employees to research about new innovations, and provide them incentives to think outside the box. Give them some training time to learn new things on their own. If possible, try to provide tuition reimbursements. You will be surprised with all the innovative techniques that they bring back with them.

Talk to your existing customers: Most companies are so focused in expanding their business and going after new customers that they sometimes forget to value their existing customers. Surprisingly, some of the best ideas come from your own customers rather than your employees. And hence, it is very important to listen to your existing customers than completely focusing your attention on growing your business by acquiring new customers. Obviously, your customers are not always going to tell you what are the risks that your business is going to face in the future, but you can at least estimate those risks based on your customer’s feedback. Take T-Mobile for example, when they started to listen to their customers, they changed the entire mobile industry through their “uncarrier” movement. On the contrary, look at Black Berry; if they would have listened to their customers and recognized the need for touch-phone touch with the third party app development support, then they wouldn’t be in this difficult financial situation today.

Obviously, no one can eliminate all blind spots that your organization will face, but you can take proactive steps to lessen risks associated with it. I hope, my blog can help you in minimizing these risk factors. Let me know, if you have any other ideas through which we can eliminate our organizational blind spots further. Thanks – Bhavin Gandhi