The Land of the Blind

In 667BC Byzas, son of King Nisos of Megara, was contemplating a multi-billion drachma new investment designed to secure his strategic footprint in the Eastern Mediterranean. As part of his due diligence process, and at his anxious father’s insistence, he consulted with the Oracle at Delphi – an early investment market analyst with a track record of vague but somehow portentous economic forecasts. It seemed a reasonable first step for a young venture capitalist king determined to make his mark.

“Build your city opposite the ‘Land of the Blind’,” intoned the Oracle. So, a contrarian view seeking undefended exposure in emerging markets, thought the old man. Once young Byzas actually consulted his charts, he discovered that ‘The Land of the Blind’ was in fact an insider trading nickname for Chalcedon, an early Greek colony founded on the eastern approach out of the Sea of Marmara into the Bosphorus Straits. Inexplicably, the Chalcedonians had failed to spot the real prize directly opposite them.

The real prize lay on the western shore of the Straits where the rocky promontory of Stamboul and its natural harbour of the Golden Horn provided the perfect defensible position - a pinch point commanding the entire system of seaways linking the Mediterranean with the hospitable, sweet waters of Pontos or the ‘Black Sea'. Not so fast, Jason, my friend, never mind the Golden Fleece, we charge highway poll tax here – per Argonaut. Ching-ching.

And thus Byzantium – the rest is history. 

As a young man, King Byzas was able to close his eyes, shut out the noise and listen hard to the cryptic, inner wisdom of the Oracle. As a result he could ‘see’ the invisible strategic landscape beneath the geographical one that had ‘blinded’ his competitors. It is the same experience that thousands of leaders have today when they enter a ‘Dialogue in the Dark’ workshop and spend time with blind coaches in total darkness reflecting on the crowded noisiness of their markets and their lives. 

Some emerge to make clear and far-sighted next moves - others return to their ‘Land of the Blind’.