How strong is your advisor ecosystem?

Strategic leaders create a blind spot detection force.

THINK ON IT: How strong is your advisor ecosystem?

Last week, I suggested that a strong way to sharpen our strategy is to intentionally seek out and mentor another.

The opposite is also true.

Developing a strong advisor ecosystem is one of the best ways to keep from making unforced errors in your decision making.

There’s a lot of “trust your gut” business advice out there, and in some cases, it’s good advice. After all, you can’t know everything that will happen and you can never be certain about an outcome, so sometimes you do have to take a leap of faith and execute on an idea before you have the proof of concept. 

But far too often that becomes our default: we act, thinking our gut will lead the way. We assume we know more about our own business than anyone else does, so why slow down the process by involving others in it?

Yet, the laudable desire to be a decisive leader may unintentionally derail your strategy.

To be sure, you probably do know more than anyone else about your business. But you can’t know everything.

And the one thing you definitely won’t know is where your blind spots are — all those things you’re not even considering and the faulty assumptions you may not even be aware that you hold.

So how can you avoid falling into an echo chamber of your own making? 

By building a strong ecosystem of trusted advisors. Think of them as your “blind spot detection force.”

Here’s what makes an ecosystem of advisors strong:

• You choose them to challenge your beliefs, not to confirm them.

• You choose them because of their competency, not because of their price.

• You chose them to get messy with you, sitting on your side of the table and grappling with an issue with you, not to give you quick answers like a vending machine. 

Yes, you can read books. And you should.

Yes, you can query Google or your favorite AI tool. And you should.

But these can’t query you. They will never match what you’ll get from building relationships with trusted individuals who can dig into what you see and help you discover that critical perspective you might be missing. 

After nearly 30 years of being a trusted advisor to CEOs, I have some ideas about what makes a good advisor. Before you hire an advisor, read on for my list of critical advisor competencies—Premium Subscribers only. (Become a Premium Subscriber. Paid subscribers get access to nearly 100 tools and how-tos on implementing strategic topics, including a 7-part series to help leaders build their own strategic capacity.)

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“The people closest to me determine my level of success or failure. The better they are, the better I am. And if I want to go to the highest level, I can do it only with the help of other people. We have to take each other higher.”

— John C. Maxwell

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