I read a little anecdote about Jeff Bezos today that made me smile.

It’s a self-deprecatingly humorous memory from the startup days of Amazon, and it contains a lesson so important that Bezos remembered it more than five years later.

I won’t spoil it for you, because it’s a fun read. And it’s super short. Click here to read it.

What I love about the story is how perfectly it illustrates that all of us—no matter how smart, experienced, or motivated—have blind spots. We can be especially susceptible to them when we’re deep in the weeds of work, or when we perceive our work has high stakes attached. These situations can keep us wedded to work assumptions that no longer serve us.

What I most love about the story, though, is that Bezos was open to having his assumptions upended by an employee. He must have been humble enough in that moment that his employee felt comfortable speaking up. And Bezos had the good humor and smarts to see immediately that the employee’s idea was way better than his own.

In any business, employees are often an underutilized source of creative solutions. They’re closer to processes and problems. Listening to them is a big part of a consultant’s work—but physician practice owners and practice managers can do it, too. (And it won’t cost a penny!)