Good morning from Frankfurt!

I'm sorry I missed sending out a Leadership Notes last week, but the internet connections in Ghana were at best intermittent. If you recall two weeks ago I mentioned doing things for the first time as an exercise of leadership. I wonder how that worked for you.

My firsts included the amazing, seeing elephants in the wild and touching a live crocodile, and the mundane, buying a rice dish from a roadside market, and running along an African beach in my bare feet for exercise. I hope your firsts were as invigorating.

One of the many lessons I learned, was just this past Saturday. During a tour of a slave trade castle in Cape Coast, the guide talked of how the first Anglican church in Western Africa was built in the walls of the castle, directly above one of the dungeons. There was even a spy hole about 3 feet square that opened up next to the front door of the church. The smell alone of 1000 people held in close quarters, in tropical heat for weeks at a time would have been overpowering as people went to church above. This got me wondering about our blind spots. What are we ignoring in our organizations that is in fact rotten, as indeed the slave trade was? What are we accustomed to that we assume is 'normal' because 'we've always done it that way?'

Often the only way to see in our blind spots is to listen very carefully to our critics. To pay close attention to those who don't necessarily think we're on the right track. They're very possibly pointing to one of our blind spots.

May this week be a week of uncovering blind spots for us all.