Winning the Long Game
How strategic Leaders shape the future.
fm the L Podcast.com 3/16 enhanced by Peter/CXO Wiz4biz
Overview. This is a deep dive into a book (available in Audio or Print), “Winning the Long Game” – where the Author (Steve Krupp) profiles the Strategic Leadership Tactics of very successful & well-known business leaders.
What is the Approach? Contrasting successful leaders such as Elon Musk, Richard Branson, Oprah Winfrey, & Pope Francis with others who are either mediocre or outright failures. The goal of the book is to teach you how to develop the “discipline” of strategic Leadership in a world of growing uncertainty.
Who’s the Audience? This book is perfect for entrepreneurial managers seeking to become more strategic – in order to create sustainable value inspirational leadership to keep their business running at maximum possibilitys
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The Book’s Unique Quality. I think what makes this book different is that we are really looking at the integration of strategy & leadership. There are countless books on strategy and quite a few on leadership, but very few that really look at how to put it together. Another way that makes this book different is that we have taken this fuzzy idea of strategic leadership & thinking, then we’ve turned it into very specific tangible behaviors. We also give very specific tools and techniques that leaders can take to become more strategic.
The Reader or Listener’s Takeaway. The big takeaway for me is that everyone can be strategic. There are tips & tools that we can all use, to look out further, to challenge assumptions, to make more sense of the data around us, that each of us can apply every day.
A Deep Dive into this Subject. One of the things that is interesting about the book is that we start with a story about a fictitious character named Jane. She is in the middle of a annual Performance Review and has got a lot of positive feedback at the beginning of her review. But then the interview takes a strange turn and Jane learns that she has got some issues and her boss tells her that she’s not “strategic enough”. The premise of the book is how Jane can become more strategic.
The Six (6) Disciplines is how the book is organized. The 6 disciplines are anticipate, challenge, interpret, decide, align, & learn.
D1. Anticipation is about being able to see sooner and scan wider. In this chapter, there are successful stories of different people who have anticipated well and also stories of ones who haven’t.
D2. Challenge, and we start with an unlikely leader for a Business book – Pope Francis. Pope Francis practices two components that we think are the essence of the challenge discipline. He opens the window to let in fresh thinking, fresh ideas, & fresh points of view.
D3. Interpretation – which is about amplifying signals from people & trends, then connecting dots between them – to complete the Pixar, er, Picture.
D4. Decisions. There are two things that we think are critical for deciding. 1) exploring your Options (and making sure you don’t rush into a hasty decision – before you’ve collected sufficient facts) & 2) then having the courage to make tough choices from competing Options.
D5. Alignment, about how to motivate people, so that they are on board the Bus to get to the Goals you have established. This discipline is also about – how to bridge differences because there can be miss-alignment & competing issues to deal with.
D6 Learning. -which is about experimenting, trying new things, then diving deep to learn from those.
Example – Nelson Mandella. All the 6 disciplines are brought together around this very well-known leader. We are shown how Nelson applies all these six disciplines in his vision of transformation in South Africa from Apartheid to Freedom.
Reflections. At the end of each chapter we take a step back and ask ourselves: “What Jane would do in each of these situations”. We give very practical tips, tools, & techniques that people can use to get better at any or all of these disciplines.
Comments: Are there any other Factors – you think are important – for Winning the Long Game?