To succeed in business, it’s dangerous to get stuck in the day to day minutia. You need a big picture — a vision and strategy for the future. But it can be difficult for busy leaders to focus on strategies when they’re overwhelmed by the immediate demands of running a business. They spend most of their time down in the trenches, rather than surveying the horizon and making plans to boldly win far more than competitors.

Assuming that your business is dedicating adequate resources to big-picture thinking, how many of those plans have been put into action versus sitting on a shelf? Even with a plan in hand, developing strategic blind spots along the way is also a threat. Problems don’t only arise from the risks you understand or don’t understand. The biggest danger may be from those things you don’t see coming at all. Periodically having an outside expert assess your business can eliminate these blind spots and bring greater overall clarity about what’s working, what isn’t, and how to improve.