Imagine you're the owner of a high-end hotel. 

Wearing your managerial cap, you inspect one of the rooms.
Carpet vacuumed? Check.
Bed made? Check?
TV on standby? Check.
Finally, is the hair-drier in its drawer? Check.

According to this mindset, the room is perfect.But what if you preloaded your inspection with a different question? What if you asked, 'What, specifically, is wrong with this room?'

To find out, you might have to spend the night in it. You start by drawing the curtains and realise they don't quite meet. It's tricky to sleep with light streaming in, so you try to pull one curtain over the other, then pin them closed using a chair. Then you get into bed and realise the TV has a blinking standby light. Even through closed eyelids, the Rio Carnival is marching across your retinas. You throw a sock over the TV. Then you try to plug your phone in to charge. There's no plug-point beside your bed.

The next morning you find the hair-drier where it should be, but it's fixed to one side of the room, where there is no mirror. You have to perform an awkward operation gazing across the room in the opposite mirror.

When we view our businesses from our own managerial perspective, the mental framework yields little new information. But preload the inspection with a different question, such as, 'What's awful about the experience of dealing with us?,' and it throws new worlds of information into light. 

To find opportunities to innovate and improve, preload your inspection of your own business with a different question. A good starting point, if you truly want to become the greatest in your game, is to ask: 'What's awful about the experience of dealing with me?'