“Improvise, adapt, overcome.”
– Green Berets
“Grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change,
the courage to change the things I can,
and the wisdom to know the difference.”
– Serenity Prayer
“Theory without practice is pointless; practice without theory is mindless.”
– Andrew MacLennan
Introduction – Amazing Strategic & Execution Leadership Principles
Characterizing what a leader is and how a leader thinks can be daunting. Take a minute, go to your web browser, Google the term “leader” or “leadership mindset,” and read through some of the results.
As you scroll down the page and click on the different articles, you will find no lack of creativity or quantity in the leadership behaviors, characteristics, and actions identified by different people and organizations. How different people address the leadership question will likely depend on each person’s perspectives, experiences, and intended audience. Everyone has their own little spin on the idea.
To make the definition of leadership even more challenging, consider that the exercise above covers a general leadership context. When you now add the requirements of defining leadership in a strategy-execution context, the list of characteristics grows more prominent and intricate.
If we were to step back and think about what’s been covered so far in this book, we’d note we’ve learned that a leader is a master or aspiring master possessing both soft and hard skills. To bridge the strategy-execution gap, a leader is also responsible for aligning the organization’s primary strategy, “The Big What,” to all “The Little What’s” that define daily life in the organization by integrating The How.
As Bossidy noted on the disparity between strategy and execution,
“Setting strategy is elegant. It’s a clean and sophisticated process of collecting and analyzing data, generating insights, and identifying smart paths forward. There’s a PowerPoint deck, board meetings, and high-fives when strategy is finished. On the other hand, execution puts on boots and trudging through the mud. Execution involves everything that comes next and is a “systematic way of exposing reality and acting on it.”
Because they are so different, strategy and execution, require different types of thinking. Strategic thinking is long-term thinking, usually in the context of 3-5 years out. Execution thinking is action-oriented thinking, focused on the present or near future. Thinking like a leader requires the ability to do both with equal skill. Leadership thinking isn’t just about doing one thing right; it’s doing many things and different types of things, often simultaneously.
As shades of grey color our environment, do you have the mental bandwidth, perspective, and experience necessary to overcome the hurdles? Can you apply the spirit of the GSD body of knowledge to tackle each scenario appropriately?
Yes, having a great leader’s situational awareness and learning habits is fantastic, but your overall impact will be limited if you aren’t ready to step up and think differently.
We must act differently and think differently to close the strategy-execution gap and build operational and professional excellence in our organizations.
Chess, Not Checkers – Amazing Strategic & Execution Leadership Principles
“Chess is like looking across an ocean. Checkers is like looking down a well.”
– Dr. Marion F. Tinsley
“Winning in this game is all a matter of understanding how to capitalize on the strengths of each piece and timing their moves just right.”
– Bobby Fisher
“Everybody Has a Plan Until They Get Punched in the Mouth.”
– Mike Tyson
Most of us begin our leadership journey by utilizing a management approach similar to the game of checkers. Checkers is a fun, highly reactionary game often played frantically. The rules are clear and easy to learn. The available strategies employed in this leadership style are limited, if not rudimentary: jump over enough opposing pieces while losing fewer of your own to reach the opposite starting point on the board.
All the pieces are uniform and move similarly; they are interchangeable in checkers. All the pieces are identical at first and exhibit the same behavior until they are “Kinged.” Only then can pieces receive additional dimensions to their movements. As a player, you must plan and coordinate each piece’s movements, but all pieces move at the same pace, on parallel paths. Checkers is akin to having a limited toolset, a black-and-white worldview, and a problem-solving approach. Early in our careers, we can move quickly and have fun along the way.
Leadership today can better be compared to chess, a game in which strategy matters—a game in which individual pieces have unique abilities that drive unique contributions. The saying goes, “It is easy to learn but takes a lifetime to master.”
Chess is deceptively deep and requires heightened focus and intuition to win. Each of the six types of pieces moves differently in chess, and you can’t play if you don’t understand each piece’s unique value and vulnerabilities.
Chess champions and great leaders reach high success levels through their lifelong study of the game- masters train themselves to recognize various play patterns. No chess player has ever walked into a professional-level tournament off the streets without training and won.
Chess mastery involves each player’s years of study, practice, and coaching. Similarly, to build an execution mindset, you must be willing and commit to the same discipline in increasing your awareness through deliberate practice.
By understanding how to play each game and use each piece against each opponent, you will have a broader and more dynamic set of tools. When you look harder, the difference is that checkers is a game about following the rules, while chess is about knowing how to best apply the rules in different contexts.
Perhaps the most remarkable difference between chess and checkers is how the players prepare for matches. Checkers players show up, and whatever happens, happens. Chess players study the game and are never done learning.
Strategy-Execution in Chess – Chess, Not Checkers
Strategy Thinking in chess is approaching problems with the mindset of: “What is the fewest number of moves required to win?
In chess, the most important thing is simple: protect the king. If you protect your king and check the opposing king, you win. So, in playing the game, each move revolves around doing everything you can to protect your king while taking out the other king.
When the chess game begins, the best players have their strategy set. They plan to win the game, capturing the opponent’s king in the fewest moves possible without losing their king first. Now comes the Execution part.
One of the first execution lessons from chess is to remember what is essential. It doesn’t matter if you captured more of your opponent’s pieces, whether you’ve taken their highly valued queen or anything else but have “checked” their king into submission.
As a leader participating in strategy-execution, you must know what is most essential and shield it with everything you have. It’s easy to get distracted and chase the wrong things during the game. Like chess players, good strategy-execution thinkers also realize that a single loss on the board does not necessarily lead to total failure—losing a piece is not the end of the game unless the king is lost.
If you make an error or lose a person on your team, that’s okay- It is not the end, but you must look at what you have remaining to continue the game. You must be able to adapt, redefine, and execute on your path to victory. There is a nearly infinite set of paths toward achieving your goal.
Develop a Strategy but Prepare to Adapt – Chess, Not Checkers
You can have a strategy in chess and life, but an unexpected move or circumstance can and will often force you to adjust your plan
Chess players are known for their ability to quickly iterate between alternatives in their minds and play out the probabilities and reactions to each set of actions. Each action or process is viewed from multiple perspectives: If A, B, or C. If B, then D, or F. Chess players learn to see the game holistically and understand that they are playing not just a strategic game but a mental one.
Before, we learned that “plans are useless, but planning is everything”; that applies here because the game of chess depends on your opponent. If your opponent does not react to the initial strategy, you must adapt on the fly. Winning strategies are not memorized start-to-finish choreography but rather practical and proven patterns. Chess players learn to recognize patterns of pieces that turn into success.
Leaders who bridge the strategy-execution gap think and act like master chess players: they can see the whole game—the sequence of all probable steps and actions, not merely the next piece to move. In every game, the player must react to their opponent’s moves and strategy to their strategy. What could have been the plan might quickly change depending on the opposing strategy in play?
Rarely do master chess players get surprised by losing because they forgot to move a piece or fell into a simple trap. Instead, chess players prepare themselves for play by accepting that the best strategy is not the one they started with but will win. Chess champions see opportunities or weaknesses in their opponents; they must work to lay a trap for their opponents to walk into. It’s subtle until it’s not.
Lessons from the Chess Board – Chess, Not Checkers
Chess and strategy execution are similar because there must be a flexible strategy and an understanding of the intricate players and roles. The objective of chess is to capture or “check” the opponent’s king.
While there are hundreds of answers to this riddle, the right solution that wins that game comes from studying your current opponent and making the right decisions under the present circumstances.
In this section, we’ll explore in more detail the lessons in thinking like a leader that we can draw from chess, which includes:
Be Decisive. The best chess players have a strategy for capturing the opponent’s king, but the play doesn’t begin until they make their move. In professional chess matches, there is even a timer. It doesn’t matter how brilliant you are; you have to ACT.
Be Proactive. Chess is not checkers. You always think three, five, maybe even ten or more moves ahead (if you’re a chess master).
Be Prepared. The best chess players are masters of the game. They’ve learned all the moves. They’ve done their homework or know from experience their opponents’ strategies and playing styles. They can execute because they come prepared.
Be Focused. Chess masters stay focused on the battle they’ve chosen. If an opponent’s move suddenly makes one of the opponent’s chess pieces vulnerable, the chess master will not be distracted from his strategy. Think like a leader, choose your battles carefully, and stay focused on that battle no matter what tempting detours or distractions may appear.
Be Innovative. Chess masters win with strategies and moves their opponents never envisioned or expected. But they also play within the norms and rules of the game. Groundbreaking chess masters are mavericks, not heretics.
Be Decisive – Amazing Strategic & Execution Leadership Principles
“You’re allowed to fail; you’re not allowed to not try.”
– David Maister
“Done is better than perfect.”
– Cheryl Sandberg
“Not making a choice is still a choice.”
– Unknown
The strategy-execution mindset is about making the best decision possible with the available facts and information and committing to action. It’s having the knowledge, grit, and skills to assess a situation, collaborate, plan, and move forward. Execution is considering alternative paths to achieve a clear goal and then taking action. You either do, or you don’t.
If we wanted to boil this down to even fewer words, we could say that closing the strategy-execution gap depends on decisiveness.
Strategy-Execution isn’t a lengthy process of considering your options, thinking, discussing, pursuing one option, pulling back, deliberating further, and then doing nothing. This is the typical reaction to challenges in organizations.
Responsibility is diffused, nothing is decided, and nothing happens because nothing is decided. When decisions are denied or deferred, the organization takes note of engagement plummets and productivity plummets. Once a challenge becomes a crisis, scenario upon scenario pile upon each other with no one doing what is required to address each one.
Like a ticking time bomb, deferring action can cause the problem to blow up at an inopportune time… and cause severe damage. The problem with indecision is that it starts with the small things and graduates to the more critical challenges and difficulties. Even worse, indecisiveness can be perceived as doing something to others who aren’t carefully observant.
Strategy-Execution = Decisiveness
Take Ownership – Be Decisive
As we learned before, leadership is tied to ownership. A decision demonstrates ownership in acknowledging that we are responsible. Instead of hiding from outcomes, decisive leaders instead look for and embrace challenges as opportunities.
Indecisiveness is a dangerous trait in weak leaders because rather than face a challenging scenario, they hide from it or delegate it away. They remain silent rather than say the right thing, which may cause a confrontation and debate.
Thinking like a leader is having the mindset and critical eye to determine when “I am the best person to decide.” In other words, decisiveness is a must-have trait in leaders because it puts ownership and accountability back into the hands of the people with the best vantage point and resources required to make an impact.
Indecisiveness signals to others in the organization that your strategy as a leader is hope—hope that someone else knows what to do and will, by some chance, know that they must do it. You hope that someone else will step in to solve your problems.
When you fail to act, you fail to display leadership. Momentum is lost. Enthusiasm is lost. Confidence is lost. If you don’t make a decision or change, your strategy is hope. You should say it loud and proud to those around you to eliminate confusion about your value proposition to the organization.
Thinking Like a Leader > hope
Be Collaborative (Up to a Point) – Be Decisive
To think like a leader and take ownership and accountability does not mean making every decision without input or help from others.
Great leaders can quickly and fluidly assess a situation by pulling together people to help think through each path and understand who must agree, who should have inputs, who has ultimate responsibility for making the decision, and who is accountable for follow-through. A process to iterate through these steps quickly allows for smoother coordination and quicker response times.
While multiple people can contribute ideas and suggestions on what should be done, there should be a single decision-maker who is the single point of accountability. This person must bring the decision to closure and commit the organization to act.
Whoever makes the final decision should have sound business judgment, a grasp of the relevant trade-offs, a bias for action, and a keen awareness of the organization executing the decision. In each scenario, always be ready to answer “Who needs to do What and by When” in each scenario.
Decisiveness is gathering relevant information based on activity drivers, building assumptions for the unknowns using the best information available, and then pulling the trigger. The objective shouldn’t be consensus but buy-in after the decision is made.
In working to reach a decision, collaboration is essential, deliberation is vital, but there needs to be a cutoff point where people move forward in a coordinated effort. A strong leader intuitively knows where this point lies.
Talk <> Action
Good Is Good Enough – Be Decisive
Often, good is good enough to make an intelligent decision.
To think like a leader, we recognize which factors matter to performance and which don’t. While we must accept some ambiguity, we should seek to minimize it as much as possible, as quickly as possible.
Indecisiveness is sometimes caused by a perfectionist mentality where we spend an incredible amount of time and resources chasing things that don’t matter. Execution and decisiveness are about identifying the 20% of factors that drive 80% of the results.
Thinking Like a Leader > Overthinking
The appealing aspect of strategy-execution thinking is that even if (and when) you make the wrong decision, you will have the opportunity to learn from it. Once the smoke settles, you can step back and examine the pattern of thoughts and actions that led to your faulty conclusion. You can chart out your state of mind in considering the factors and explain your actions to better understand what should or should not have been done next time a decision is required.
With each new challenge, you can adapt your approach and improve over time. The faster you can arrive at a decision, the faster you can execute it. The better you get and the faster you can adapt from wins and losses, the better your chances of delivering superior skyrockets in the long run. Every time you execute, you can learn what works and doesn’t and why.
Making good decisions and executing them quickly are the hallmarks of high-performing organizations. As the saying goes, a good decision executed quickly beats a brilliant decision implemented slowly.
Reactive or Proactive – Amazing Strategic & Execution Leadership Principles
“Failure to prepare means preparing to fail.”
– Unknown
“I am not a product of my circumstances. I am a product of my decisions.”
– Dr. Stephen R. Covey
In The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, being proactive is the first habit to be mastered. And rightly so. The paradigm of being reactive versus proactive touches all aspects of life. Whether in education, your community, or your job, outcomes are more favorable when you demonstrate ownership of your life and your condition to make the most of it.
Being proactive means that you’re prepared to act.
Being reactive means that you’re ready to blame.
Reactive people don’t act; they’re acted upon.
Of the characteristics included in strategy-execution, being proactive is critical because it is so closely tied to the concept of ownership. For example, if you aren’t mindful of how work is best conducted in business, you may leave a web of resource-consuming madness behind you. If you aren’t proactive in your education and skills, you’ll be unprepared to meet new challenges or keep up with old ones.
Proactivity is powerful because it requires an individual to accept responsibility for their situation (no matter how dire) and take the initiative to make things better. Successful leaders embrace proactiveness and go above and beyond when delivering ideas and time to a project. The next time you or someone on your team thinks you’ve done enough, do just a little bit more to ensure that Shit Gets Done and done right. Always think about “what if” rather than “what is” to become more proactive.
Thinking proactively is more than being prepared; you take a posture towards the world. Instead of letting conditions and circumstances shape decisions, proactive leaders allow their values, experiences, and perspective to determine their choices.
Proactive people act on their world rather than being acted upon. Even though they aren’t sure what to expect, they know how to handle themselves when life shows up.
Proactive leaders become comfortable with ambiguity as they learn to anticipate what could and may happen. Being ready and hoping for the best but expecting the worst will make you more effective and skilled in reacting to and handling the unforeseen. If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.
Proactive leadership thinking focuses on eliminating problems before they have a chance to appear, while reactive thinking is based on responding to events after they have happened. The difference between these two mindsets is the perspective in assessing actions and events.
Reactive leaders suffer and strain as they let their circumstances and conditions control them. They don’t see the gap between the circumstances and outcomes and might inadvertently believe that one determines the other. A reactive leader will also be in a foul mood if the weather is foul.
If someone is short with them, they are short with others. When reactive leaders get negative feedback, they become defensive and bitter. Reactive leaders see the world as not their problem and have detached themselves from any form of ownership.
Thinking proactively matters a great deal, not in just leading or participating in strategy-execution but in staying relevant and employable.
As New York Times columnist and bestselling author Thomas Friedman wrote, “Employers are all looking for the same kind of people — people who have not only the critical thinking skills to do the value-adding jobs that technology can’t, but also people who can invent, adapt, and reinvent their jobs every day, in a market that changes faster than ever.”
Some reactive thinking phrases to look out for:
1. There’s nothing I can do.
2. They make me so mad.
3. They won’t allow that.
4. I have to do that.
5. I can’t do that.
6. If only I could.
Whenever you catch yourself using one of these reactive phrases, replace it with a proactive one:
· Let’s look at our alternatives.
· I can choose a different approach.
· I control how I respond to this.
· I choose.
· I prefer.
· I will.
Be clear and systematic. Take ownership. Think proactively.
Lucky or Prepared – Amazing Strategic & Execution Leadership Principles
“Anyone can get lucky; not everyone can persevere.”
– The Daily Stoic
“Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.”
– Seneca
“There are facts and opportunities and realities, and how you respond to them determines whether you succeed or fail. Luck becomes a convenient excuse when things don’t go your way and a rationale for staying comfortable while you wait for luck to determine your fate. You can’t become excellent at execution if you’re willing to gamble everything on the unknown. “
– Grover, Tim S. Relentless: From Good to Great to Unstoppable
“I believe that people make their own luck by great preparation and good strategy.”
– Jack Canfield
When General Dwight D. Eisenhower wrote to his wife on the eve of the invasion of Normandy, he told her, “Everything we could think of has been done, the troops are fit, everybody is doing his best. The answer is in the lap of the gods.”
Powerful, right? The leader in charge of perhaps the most powerful army the world had ever assembled, on the eve of the most expertly organized and planned invasion the world will hopefully ever know, was humble enough to know that he could not control the outcome. Instead, Eisenhower did everything he could to prepare for whatever challenge arose the next day.
Eisenhower was a great general because he understood the importance and distinction between being prepared and lucky. Being prepared means that you have considered the possible, you’ve considered the improbable, and you’re considered the impossible. You’ve put together a plan and have trained for each scenario. Luck picks one of the three possible scenarios and throws everything into one basket.
However, the challenge is that being prepared instead of lucky requires much work and leadership. It involves training for events that are likely not to happen but being ready if they do. It involves anticipating the unknown through contingency plans. Leadership thinking is hoping that plans work out and that people know what they must do and by when, but still planning for what we can’t possibly know. We become luckier by training ourselves and the people around us to handle unforeseen circumstances.
It’s important not to confuse risk aversion with luck. If we take no chances, our odds of not being wrong go down by 100%. Instead, leaders who exhibit the strategy-execution mindset identify the scenarios with a high payoff and more than likely odds of succeeding. Preparation then addresses the circumstances that could later be prescribed as bad luck. Preparation is responsible for what outsiders might observe as “good luck.” A professional poker player betting on a strong hand does not have the same odds as an addict playing scratch-off lotto tickets in a convenience store. Both take risks, but only one takes action, precautions, and a strategy to command ownership of the outcomes.
Here’s the litmus test: If good fortune comes your way and you’re surprised, you’re lucky.
Battles Win Wars – Amazing Strategic & Execution Leadership Principles
“The talent of the strategist is to identify the decisive point and to concentrate everything on it, removing forces from secondary fronts and ignoring lesser objectives.”
– Carl von Clausewitz
Sun Tzu’s “Art of War” implored readers to be mindful in pursuing opportunities. To think like a leader, recognize that not all opportunities are equal, and some opportunities should never be pursued:
“It is said that if you know your enemies and know yourself, you will not be imperiled in a hundred battles; if you do not know your enemies but do know yourself, you will win one and lose one; if you do not know your enemies nor yourself, you will be imperiled in every single battle.”
You will find that wherever you work and do, there will always be more opportunities than resources to engage with each one. While many tempting battles or business opportunities are available, we must be capable and willing to identify the most critical opportunities to win, producing the highest output. Those who produce the highest output fight on the critical path to achieving an organization’s strategy.
From Art of War:
“The main strategy in war is to define the desired outcome and specific goal; the tactics in war deals with current tasks and problems. The chances to win are high; if the commander has made strong preliminary calculations, he wins even before the battle starts. If the commander does not think and reason and refers depreciatingly to the enemy, he will surely become his prisoner.”
Here, it is worth pointing out that awareness and decisiveness go hand in hand in warfare and strategy-execution. People who think like leaders are hyper-aligned and laser-focused on the highest-impact actions that drive the organization’s most important outcomes.
They study the opportunities available, rally and commit the resources, and say “yes” to the critical battles and “no” to the distractions. They pick the battles that set the stage to give themselves every benefit possible and detractors every obstacle.
When choosing your battles, always take the time to organize, create a plan, and connect what you’re considering to the organization’s strategy. Sometimes, it is tempting to commit heavily to early battles meaningless (strategy). If you are too quick to jump into action and tend to start a project without a well-organized plan of attack, resources and energy will get bogged down.
We must learn to pick our battles because we have limited time and energy. Some battles are not worth fighting if we can find a way around them. Some battles will never be won, and we should not try to fight them to stay alive. And some battles are not ours to fight.
The battles worth fighting for are the ones that consume the fewest resources, take the least amount of time, and produce the most significant results. Your goal is to win the war by successfully reaching the end objective, achieving the company strategy, and ignoring the rest.
Thinking like a leader is knowing what is within our control and what is not, rather than fighting an unwinnable battle. You can’t take on every problem at work. No matter who there are, each person only has a finite amount of political capital.
If you make a huge fuss over something silly, you may not be able to get your way when it’s something really important. Even if you’re confident that the issues you want to tackle are critical, your reputation may suffer if you take them all on simultaneously.
Ask yourself if you would rather be right or be effective. You can be right sometimes, but you sabotage yourself by going after the wrong challenge, at the wrong time, with the wrong resources, and in the wrong way.
Attack the Flanks – Amazing Strategic & Execution Leadership Principles
“Attack him where he is unprepared; appear where you are not expected.”
-Sun Tzu
A natural transition to follow up on the concept of picking the right battles to win the war or achieve a strategy is to continue with Sun Tzu and his teachings. In the Art of War, Sun Tzu is credited with the military maxim of attacking the flanks with the words, “Attack him where he is unprepared, appear where you are not expected.”
For thousands of years, military leaders have acknowledged the power of attacking the flanks of their enemies. Past military generals have often overcome troop numbers and weaponry disadvantages by successfully executing a flanking strategy.
If you can imagine, in war, an enemy about to be attacked will have a good idea of where their enemy’s main force is, and with that information, they will build up defenses in one general direction. The attacking force then has its own choices to make.
They can run straight into the front of the enemy’s defenses, take heavy losses and possibly lose the fight. The attacking force can survey the enemy defenses, maneuver around one side or more that appears weak, and press their greater numbers. Rather than just theory, this strategy has been used to shape the world we live in, both current and ancient.
To understand the power behind pursuing the enemy’s flanks, consider the battle of Cannae in 216 BC during the Second Punic Wars.
At Cannae, Hannibal of Carthage led his forces to perhaps one of the most significant military victories of all time when he defeated the numerically superior army of the Roman Republic in their domain. The Romans fielded 80,000 soldiers and 6,000 cavalry in this fight, while Hannibal fielded just 40,000 infantry and 10,000 cavalry. Hannibal assessed the situation, recognized his forces’ unique strengths, and built a strategy around it.
First, Hannibal deployed his superior cavalry to neutralize the enemy’s numerical advantage and increase his forces’ flexibility. Then, he set his weakest troops in the middle of his battle line with his seasoned veterans on the flanks. Hannibal allowed the Roman forces to advance, and as they surged forward and engaged, Hannibal slowly pulled back his main battle line to draw in more of the enemy. Around this time, Hannibal sent his veteran forces around the flank on both sides of the Romans to perform a complete double envelopment of the enemy.
Hannibal’s flanking maneuvers at Cannae created a scenario where the Roman’s numerical advantage became a disadvantage. As a result, the Roman soldiers panicked, and the army lost an estimated 50,000 soldiers while Hannibal lost only 6,000 men.
While most of us are not engaged in warfare, the lessons of identifying and attacking the weak flanks remain as powerful and relevant as ever. Several options are always available to overcome the challenge you face. The trick is having the right mindset to use your skills, knowledge, courage, and humility to uncover hidden possibilities.
In a business context, attacking the flanks can be interpreted as leaders thinking creatively to overcome their perceived constraints. Time and again in business, we see small start-up companies bring large, entrenched incumbents with giant customer bases and deep pockets to their knees.
At first glance, small start-ups seem to be at a massive disadvantage. Their success comes from attacking the flanks—they don’t try to attract customers with the same products that the large incumbents offer but instead offer innovative new products or processes.
However, most of us do not have an endless checkbook or unlimited time. Pursuing the flanks is a wise option to bypass unnecessary hurdles to increase progress and decrease the cost of any initiative
The innovation-focused mindset of attacking the flanks is useful because even if we have identified the right battle or opportunity to pursue, we must still be conscious of how to use our advantages to the greatest effect and, at the same time, minimize our disadvantages.
When you think like a leader, you will develop and execute strategies that overcome even overwhelming disadvantages and turn the competition’s advantages into liabilities.
Thinking like a leader also means attacking the challenges within your company. Targeting the pressure points of a big nasty problem will cause it to fold unto itself so that you can build anew.
What Attaching the Flanks looks like in action in your company is keeping in mind the law of nature:
1. Instead of spending time and money trying to fix old systems under the sunk-cost fallacy, scrap the process and build something new using tools that an ordinary person can understand.
2. Learn a new skill or technology to automate processes and free up time from non-value-added tasks.
3. Bring together the people involved in a dispute to discuss the challenges instead of passively accepting non-conformance.
4. Asking peers in other companies how they overcome similar challenges.
Going Too Far? The Maverick and The Heretic – Amazing Strategic & Execution Leadership Principles
“Vision without execution is hallucination.”
– Thomas Edison
When defining different types of innovation-minded leaders, two different personifications often appear, which we’ll refer to as the maverick and the heretic. While both personalities are similar in their eagerness to drive change and share their ideas with a bias towards action, what differentiates them is their long-term success and tenure at their organizations.
Let’s cover the definitions first:
1. A maverick is: “an unorthodox or independent-minded person who is no longer content to sit back and merely accept the traditional way of doing things.”
2. A heretic is: “a person holding an opinion at odds with what is generally accepted. A Nonconformist.”
After a quick read, the maverick and heretic may seem to think the same way. But, be careful here.
Heretics and mavericks possess visionary leadership and are unafraid of operating outside conventional thinking and bending the rules to make things happen. However, what matters greatly and determines success or failure is how the maverick or heretic interacts with others and adapts to their environment.
Typically, mavericks will be dynamic and open to criticism and collaboration, while heretics are steadfast with their vision: It is either their way or the highway. Mavericks are open to new ideas wherever they come from, but heretics have their own definition of the solution and are unbending in their approach.
The differentiating factor is often whether the mavericks or heretics can convince others to buy into their vision for change to ensure that improvements have a long-lasting benefit—rather than a quick uptick, then a reversal.
A fine line exists between being hailed as a maverick and being vilified as a heretic. While execution leadership requires risk-taking and challenging the status quo in ways that shock others into a Sense of Urgency, there is a right and wrong way to go about it.
While mavericks may exhibit some of the same traits as heretics, they are much more strategic and intentional with their actions. Characterized by strategic risk-taking behavior, mavericks become incredibly valuable because they are unafraid to make changes to improve the organization and advance its mission.
To do this, they challenge rules, persevere with grit, and demonstrate resilience and resourcefulness to overcome challenges and win support. For organizations steeped in tradition or maintaining the status quo, mavericks may be essential to moving forward.
Mavericks succeed much more than heretics in organizations because they don’t have a bull-in-a-china-shop mentality. They charge blindly about with no concept of what they might be destroying. Instead, a leader with a maverick mentality is willing to embrace strategic planning, influence-building, and preparation to implement ideas.
Mavericks drive creating and maintaining a culture that celebrates experimentation and improvement. Rather than see the world as me versus them, mavericks phrase challenges as “us versus the problem.”
On the other hand, heretics wind up causing chaos instead of results. Despite having potential and maybe some early wins, their inappropriate behavior and incapability with others will undermine its values and damage its culture.
Heretics typically don’t always get along well with others as they often think of challenges as “me versus the problem, instead of us. As a result, they often cause friction and conflict due to their quirky ways, strong wills, and outspoken demeanor. They make others uncomfortable and say things that make others grit their teeth due to a lack of awareness.
Over time, a heretic-styled leader will offend enough people and break enough sacred corporate laws to the point that they are deemed dangerous.
Ultimately, the maverick becomes celebrated for effectively leading change and Getting Shit Done. The heretic will be ostracized, marginalized, and rejected by the corporate immune system or colleagues who want harmony or simplicity.
While the heretic presented an illusion of Getting Shit Done, their downfall is the difference between Getting Shit Done and Getting Shit Done right.
The reaction to heretics is the same; they are censored, excommunicated, and exiled.
Accordingly, to think like a leader, you must demonstrate a maverick’s behaviors and avoid the heretical pitfalls. If you don’t approach challenges with the right mindset, your work will ultimately be undone.
Teach a Man to Fish – Amazing Strategic & Execution Leadership Principles
“Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime.
– Unknown
“Strategy without process is little more than a wish list.”
– Robert Filek
Mastering chess has many lessons to teach us about thinking like a leader. But there is one significant difference between chess and leaders. Chess is a solitary game; leadership is a team sport. In this final section, we’ll explore the notion that leaders’ success is measured by the success of those who work for them. And that success occurs when leaders scuttle the old command and control thinking. Leadership today requires the mentality of a teacher and coach, not a general.
Teaching a man to fish instead of giving him a fish goes back thousands of years and manifests in one form or another in cultures worldwide. If a man is given a fish, he will eat it, and the next day he will be hungry and search for yet another free meal. The man who seeks resources but does not contribute to them becomes a drain on a community.
The community must then spend time and resources tending to those who could otherwise meet their needs and add value. The lesson from this teaching is to build a strong community; people must be taught to become self-sufficient, or better yet, a teacher of others.
The man who asks for a fish is not incapable of fishing. He did not know how to go about it. A lack of leadership, education, or design saw this person falling through the cracks somewhere along the line. However, a leader will quickly fix ongoing resource drains by teaching others, leading to a strong organization or community.
Taking ownership and sacrificing time to teach others or adjust systems to be self-reliant can pay huge dividends. Each distraction slowly siphons resources, and a “death by a thousand cuts” is felt. Once they reach a crisis point, fixing these issues can be challenging. Instead, by teaching each person to meet their own needs, resources available can be diverted where they are most needed.
For example, colleagues may often ask for the information they could have easily collected if given the proper training and the necessary skill set. We often default to sharing that information because we believe it is initially faster and easier than teaching them how to collect that information. By doing this, you have given them a fish, which is not thinking like a leader. Your time that could have been spent on higher-value activities is lost, and the drain on the resources will remain so long as the process remains in place.
The challenge of teaching another person to fish for or solve their own demands requires using the word “no.” “No, I will not do what you ask without first understanding. Instead, I will take the extra step to understand and teach your needs.” What may take 2 hours to teach once saves 20 minutes daily in perpetuity.
The trick with teaching others to fish is that we must first become master fishermen. We will not be effective teachers if you haven’t learned how to catch the fish, bait a hook, or filet the catch. Leadership here is about setting the example and mastering the material ourselves before we can then help others. Being a leader with fantastic soft skills is pointless if you’ve never caught a fish yourself, just the same as being focused on only technical skills may make you frustrated and impatient while trying to share knowledge. You must have both.
In our world of strategy execution, “teaching a man to fish” means that we must strive to build self-sustaining behaviors, processes, and systems, emphasizing design thinking. Each process must be built to consume the least amount of resources, time, and attention possible so that time can be spent on what matters.
Each inefficient process or workflow causes the organization to cannibalize its resources; it takes one step forward and two steps backward. If we can view the world with a firm grasp of design thinking, the initial efforts put into work will be sustained and allow us to accelerate progress. We do not want to commit to regularly sacrificing energy, time, and other resources to ensure that what has been done stays done.
Strategy execution is better facilitated when the organization does not regularly play whack-a-mole and can apply focus and resources to reach its goals and project milestones. A good leader identifies the processes that should produce more and consume less and know who to involve. Awareness, education, and technical adeptness help differentiate between problems and potential solutions.
We can solve this dilemma by investing a little time in teaching the man to fish. A master fisherman is a leader who can connect the dots in the organization to drive increased productivity.
What teaching people to fish looks like in business:
1. Create self-serve solutions that allow users to ask and answer their own questions.
2. Understand the nature of requests.
3. Linking systems together. One master solution instead of 100 individual “solutions.”
When you think like a leader, you aren’t just interested in giving orders and micro-managing underlings. Instead, you teach others to focus on the leadership actions and decisions that create the most value for your organization.
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Updated April 21 2023
