In the Gospel of John there’s a scene that has always stuck with me.
Jesus encounters a man who has been blind since birth and heals him. Just like that. A man who had never seen anything in his entire life can suddenly see everything.
You’d think that would be cause for celebration. Instead it kicked off an interrogation.
The Pharisees, the religious authorities who were supposed to be the wisest and most discerning people in the room, dragged the man in for questioning.
They grilled him on how he was healed, who healed him, and whether any of it actually happened.
They couldn’t accept what was right in front of them because it didn’t fit their framework of how things were supposed to work.
They asked him the same question over and over.. how?.
Finally the blind man, exasperated, turned to them and said something that took real courage.
“I already told you and you didn’t listen. Why do you want to hear it again? Do you want to become his disciples too?”
They lost it and yelled at him that he was born in utter sin and who was he to teach them.
Then they threw him out.
Think about that for a second.
The man who had been blind his entire life could now see clearly.
The experts who had spent their whole lives studying scripture and teaching others remained completely blind because their identity was built on already having the answers.
Now what does a story from two thousand years ago have to do with your business?
Everything.
I talk to business owners every week who are the Pharisees in their own company. They’ve been running things for 10, 15, 20 years and that experience has become the very thing that blinds them.
When someone suggests they might be looking at their business wrong, that how they think about growth, or risk, or their own role might need to change leads not only to resistance but ridicule at the very idea.
“I’ve been doing this for 20 years. Don’t tell me how to run my business.”
Meanwhile the evidence is right in front of them.
They haven’t taken a proper holiday in three years.
Their margins are compressed despite growing revenue.
They can’t leave the office for a week without everything wobbling.
Their kids are growing up and the best they can manage is watching it happen through videos their spouse sends while they’re buried in work.
But they can see just fine. Right?
The blind man could see because he had nothing to protect. He was open to something new because he had no investment in the old way of seeing.
The Pharisees had everything to protect.
Their authority.
Their status.
Their certainty that they already understood how the world worked made them the most blind people in the room.
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George Sotiropoulos draws a parallel between the Pharisees’ refusal to accept the healing of the blind man in the Gospel of John and business owners who resist changing how they think about their companies despite clear evidence that their current approach is costing them time, freedom, and family. Part 1 of a two-part series on the cost of staying blind in business.