Book Review: Blind Spot

How is it that business (and world) leaders know all the statistics for the economy, share markets, commodities and other indicators, but can’t tell you how happy their people are? One organisation can, and that is Gallup, who measure it on a global scale.

It the just released book Blind Spot: The Global Rise of Unhappiness and How Leaders Missed it (2022, Gallup Press), author Jon Clifton (CEO of Gallup) provides telling insights from their Gallup World Poll (GWP). The GWP began in 2006 and is based on a poll of people in 140 countries, and which has now conducted over 5 million interviews. While this is global research with global implications, the book also has observations and recommendations at the organisational level.

The point of the book (in their words) “is to show where the world is suffering in each of Gallup’s’ five elements of wellbeing, and where it can improve.” The five elements are:

• Work
• Financial
• Community
• Physical
• Social

At the organisational level and based on the findings, the author believes that the voice of organisations stakeholders is missing from their reporting. And because of this, company leaders are not aware of their stakeholder’s decreasing wellbeing and consequently are doing little to address it. The book outlines some recommendations that leaders can apply to their workers, customers, suppliers and community. Essentially it involves developing, tracking, and responding to indicators that represent the voices of these stakeholders. Those that do this will see better company performance and results.

The book is based on incredibly robust research but presents it in very easy to read gripping forms. It is hard to put this book down once you get started. You also can’t think about the issues it raises the same way again.

Overall a very interesting and informative book that leaders would do well to read and come to grips with the issues it raises.