Blind spots that quietly drain millions from your business every year.
The #1 mistake on this list is so widespread it costs the global economy the equivalent of Japan and India’s GDP combined - every single year.
Leadership isn’t a job. It’s a balancing act between clarity, people, and pressure. And the variables change every week. Mistakes are inevitable. But what separates great leaders from the rest isn’t perfection. It’s how fast they see, correct, and prevent those mistakes.
Below is the list of five most common and most expensive leadership blind spots. Why blind spots? Because they are hiding in plain sight. You probably know about all of these, without understanding their strong impact.
Let’s start from the least costly to the one that can bring your entire business to its knees.
Mistake 5: Thinking silence = alignment
One of the most common pitfalls of leadership is thinking we know the best. And while in many instances we do, there is a reason we have trained employees. It’s visible from day-to-day work to projects: a leader will create a plan or schedule, and then ask if everyone is fine with it. On the surface that is what you are supposed to do, right?
Well, only if the team has solid foundations, and it’s part of the culture that they are able to ask questions, challenge authority, and object to such plans. Unfortunately in many places, the only thing you can do is agree. Often, people won’t say much, or just nod. Even if they do speak up, they are ignored. Here lies the danger: if the foundations of culture and trust are not built, how can you know people’s silence is an agreement, and not a miscommunication or fear of disagreement?
The results can be seen in missed deadlines, projects going off track, need for corrections, etc. Since it can negatively impact not only productivity, but also motivation and morale of the team, it often leads to bigger issues down the road. It’s becoming especially costly when it’s combined with the cultural differences, which we will explore in episode 4. While not the most expensive blind spot on our list, the result can be a loss of 30% (on average) in strategic execution efficiency, which is equivalent to millions in wasted payroll and missed opportunities.
Cost: High
Mistake 4: Delegating without ownership
Many managers still believe delegation means handing off the tasks, while keeping (tight) control over decision making, authority, and ownership. This is one of the top three causes of bottlenecks and burnout in teams.
Gallup estimates poor delegation costs 20- 30% of a manager’s time weekly - that is more than one working day every single week! And within a year, that adds up to become a substantial cost for the business. Data suggests that companies with strong delegation cultures earn 33% higher revenue and 25% greater profitability.
The good thing is that it's such an easy thing to fix! In this article I walk you through 7 steps to delegate like a pro to fix this mistake for you once and for all.
Cost: High (compounding)
Mistake 3: Managing individuals, forgetting the culture.
The culture of an organisation is such a weird issue. On one hand, it’s often mentioned in business circles. But I feel it’s still treated like this odd thing, where you know you are supposed to care and create a culture, but it’s not really a focus for any manager. In reality it only comes around during HR talks or promotional events.
And it’s not an easy thing to do, because it requires time to build. However, it can get costly really fast. A strong culture, according to 88% of employees, (acc to deloitte), is essential to business success. 88%. We have seen that a toxic culture kills collaboration, innovation, and retention. And for a long time people said ‘you can't measure those things’. Yes, you can.
For our example, let’s assume we have a business of 100 people, with revenues of 10 million a year. If your productivity drops 20% because of a toxic culture, and if you need to replace 50 people every year instead of 10, then the numbers are very much measurable - and big.
Instead of 10 million in revenues, business earns 6 million. That is 40% loss, or 4 million, each year. And we are not even talking about the loss of innovation and lost opportunities. It’s a structural and long-term issue, which takes a long time to correct once it goes wrong.
Cost: Very High
Mistake 2: Urgency = Priority
It’s a plague of our modern world - everything is urgent, everything is a priority, everything needs to be completed yesterday. And while we are busy chasing the urgent, the important thing is being left behind. We think we are doing more, but we are actually bleeding time, effort, and money.
How? Just because something is urgent, doesn’t mean it’s a priority. If we allocate resources based on the urgency instead of the priority, we are losing opportunities for growth and getting ahead of our competitors. I think resource allocation is not something I hear often enough, yet it’s such an expensive mistake. How expensive? In companies that instead of committing to long term strategic priorities (basically long term goals the company wants to achieve), and keep distracting themselves with ‘urgent’ short-term tasks, they reach only 20% of the strategic goals. We explore the difference between the urgency and priority further in this article.
Why is it #2? It’s hard to spot, the long-term impact is massive, especially in scaling businesses, and it’s affecting 90% of managers!
Cost: Extremely high
Mistake 1: Disengagement.
This is the hardest one to spot, easiest to ignore, and the most expensive blind spot on our list.
Disengagement is quiet. People still show up, but stop giving their best. They are not doing anything wrong, just not as much as they used to. They will either quietly fade into the background doing bare minimum or quit. The cost of Replacement, lost productivity, and lost innovation add up fast. The issue is that most managers don’t have systems to measure it and don’t react until it’s too late.
Why it’s #1: It compounds silently and touches every part of the business: productivity, morale, retention, and bottom line. It’s hard to notice, hard to measure, even harder to quickly fix.
Unlike the communication, delegation, or priority, which can be fixed almost instantly, this one will take time and effort. But it’s very, very worth it.
Just how expensive is it? Gallup estimates disengagement at $7.8 trillion lost globally. I think this number is too abstract to understand, so let’s give a few examples of just how much it is.
That’s roughly 9% of global GDP.
$7.8 trillion is bigger than the GDP of Japan (4.204 trillion in 2020) + India (3.568 trillion in 2020) combined.
Or even if a company was burning $10 million a day since the Roman Empire, it still wouldn’t yet reach $7.8 trillion today. ($7.8 trillion ÷ $10,000,000/day = 780,000 days. 780,000 ÷ 365 = 2,137 years
Cost impact: Catastrophic
We have covered 5 most common and most costly mistakes managers don’t see coming. Some of them are quick and easy to fix, while others need careful planning and time. All of them need your attention, and can make your business growth feel effortless and outdo your competitors.
Until next time,
-A.