The ‘Draw-Down Period’

"Your attitude, not your aptitude, will determine your altitude."

1. Vision: they use a mix of logic and creativity to define ambitious but rigorous visions of what needs to be achieved. 
2. Framework: taking into account their own biases, timeline and resources, they can define their objectives and develop multiple action plans.
3. Perceptiveness: they observe and understand the world from all the different perspectives. 
4. Assertiveness: They’re good at evaluating, deciding and promptly executing their decisions without letting doubts fog their vision. 
5. Flexibility: they seek advice to compensate for their weaknesses and then twist their ideas and framework to achieve their goals. But they are flexible without breaking the rules. 
6. Emotional Balance: they are aware and balance their emotions so as to favor the achievement of their goals. 
7. Patience: they understand that most achievements are a long-term endeavor involving various milestones and a lot of effort. 

Your attention is a limited resource and you have to be careful where you are spending it.
If you choose to give away 80 percent of your attention to meetings, you will have 20 percent of your attention just for dealing with a few emails feeling overwhelmed.

• Proactive attention: you are fully focused and prepared for your most important decisions/ most complex tasks.
• Active attention: you're plugged in, but also easily distracted.
• Inactive attention: you're likely to really struggle with complex or difficult tasks.

Strategic thinkers advance their careers by being better leaders. Not all great thinkers are great leaders, but the ones who are leadership material are likely better leaders than those who fail to think strategically.

Strategic leaders go beyond the role of having and communicating a vision to fully understanding, planning and executing the necessary strategies to realize it. They make better decisions as they have a more holistic view that includes the organization and the people inside and outside it.

Strategic thinkers demonstrate organizational value by creating more strategic thinkers. Developing a culture that considers strategy and doesn’t lose sight of the value that needs to be delivered greatly increases the capabilities of a company. Strategic thinkers are the ones in the organization who ponder and prompt questions that are designed to create even more strategic thinkers.

1. Identify your driving forces: the big shifts in society, economics, technology and politics in the future and see how it will affect your company.
2. Identify your critical uncertainties: pick 1-2 of the driving forces (with the most impact).
3. Develop a range of plausible scenarios: Form a kind of matrix with your two critical uncertainties as axis and depending on what direction each of the uncertainties will take, you are now able to draw four possible scenarios for the future.
4. Discuss the implications: discuss the various implications and impacts of each scenario and start to reconsider your strategy: set your mission and your goals while taking into account every scenario.

• Don't fall into the trap is to be paralyzed by the multitude of possibilities. Keep it simple and focus on two major uncertainties.
• Don't believe that you have to choose one particular scenario and build your strategy around it. Scenario planning is not about choosing just one option for the future but rather dealing with all of the possible outcomes to develop a strategy that will stand the test of all scenarios.
• When developing your different scenarios, try to not look at the short term. Do not hesitate to look far ahead, anticipating what the market and competitors are going to be over the next years. 

Learning from others is great. But comparing your current situation to someone who is already successful can often make you feel like you lack the required resources to get started at all. 

Great gear can make your life much easier on the road, but it’s not required. You don’t need new cooking bowls to start eating healthy. And you don’t need a new backpack to start traveling.  

Great leaders do the right thing even when no one’s watching. In the times of pseudo-leadership, it’s not hard to spot an authentic leader - someone who is fair, smart, and empathetic, like Martin Luther King Jr

A true leader never shies away from voicing his opinions, breaking stereotypes, and doing the right thing - not just once but every single time.

Richard Branson knew that great things in business are never done by one person, they are done by teams.

Branson aims to find the best candidate for a job, give them enough autonomy, then step back to give them a space to flourish. It not only benefits the business as a whole but also helps them to become a leader in their own right.

In most situations failure is not a result of poor willpower, but a result of poor strategy.

Good military leaders start by winning easy battles and improving their position.

Same goes for starting habits. You should not start new habits in an environment that makes progress difficult.

Title based leaders feel everyone will fall in line because of their title. They think they are leading because they are in charge. 

But a necessary condition for leadership is trust, not a title. You have to earn trust.

One of the sufficient conditions of leadership is legitimacy. But titles do not confer legitimacy.

If your team, organization, or country doesn't view you as legitimate, you will have a tough time getting anything done.

If you want to outperform the crowd, learn the following two essential skills.

• Generate ideas by broadening your decision frame.
• You must be able to distinguish between good and bad loner strategies. It is best done by embracing critical thinking.

When we need to make a decision, we tend to ask "What should we do?" However, it narrows our thinking to one right decision.

If we ask the question: "What could we do?"  it broadens our decision-making frame, because we can consider multiple futures. Could ask what if, what else, and why not.

For example: Ask what would be the equivalent in your industry of something that’s working well in another.