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December 3, 2022 - January 1, 2023
People who don’t think more than one move ahead are driven by ego, emotion, and fear.
what sets shrewd strategists apart is their ability to anticipate
The five moves are: 1. Master Knowing Yourself 2. Master the Ability to Reason 3. Master Building the Right Team 4. Master Strategy to Scale 5. Master Power Plays
“It all depends on how honestly you can answer this question: Who do you want to be?”
Those who can tolerate pain the most—the ones with the most endurance—give themselves the highest chance of winning in business.
The only thing separating us from greatness is a vision and a plan for achieving greatness. When you’re fighting for a cause, a dream, something greater than yourself, you will find the enthusiasm, passion, and joy that make life a great adventure. The key is identifying your cause and knowing who you want to be.
It’s those moments of feeling powerless, angry, or sad that clue you in to your deepest drive.
Think back to your toughest moments when you declared, “Never again!”
You really need to get clear about what you can sacrifice and what you absolutely will not sacrifice.
A phrase I use all the time is future truth. It means to live in the present as if your future truth has already become a reality.
phrase I use all the time is future truth. It means to live in the present as if your future truth has already become a reality.
IBM to become a great company it would have to act like a great company long before it ever became one.
Do you know who you want to be? Do you have a clear vision of what that looks like? At this very moment, is the way you are acting consistent with your future truth?
challenge you to find a way to create a visual that reminds you to be heroic.
The only way to answer it is by becoming clear about the life you want to live. In doing so, you will immediately embody that person and act as if you are already there.
“But are you comfortable knowing that you may never find out your true potential in business but can still make a comfortable living and be a phenomenal dad?”
If Shawn notices envy creeping in, it will be a powerful indicator that he should reexamine his goals.
When you’re honest about who you are, you learn to stop wanting everything.
Envy is an indicator that alerts you if you’re being honest with yourself.
Again, if you feel envy, it’s an indicator that either you’re lying to yourself about what you want or you lack the discipline to accomplish it.
If someone is winning at a higher level than you are, either lower your expectations to match your work ethic or increase your work ethic to exceed your expectations.
Your vision must align with who you want to be. Your choices must align with your vision. Your effort must align with the size of your vision. Your behavior must align with your values and principles.
The Hypomanic Edge: The Link Between (a Little) Craziness and (a Lot of) Success in America by John D. Gartner.
My challenge to you is: no matter what level you’re at now, get clear on your purpose.
I came up with a plan that reflected what I wanted to achieve. I learned to translate my BHAG into my next moves and, more important, to understand the sequence of those moves against the backdrop of a new awareness about the audience.
What determines if you win in any game (or business) isn’t how good you are; it’s how good you are relative to your competition. That’s why it’s so important to know your own strengths and weaknesses and find a market in which you have an inherent advantage.
He began to see that intrapreneurship looked like the ideal choice for him. This is when you’re part of a company and create a new business unit, lead a new initiative, or work out incentives that reward you for driving growth and innovation. In some cases, it might just mean being so indispensable that a company has to pay you equity to retain you.
Five Qualities of a Successful Intrapreneur 1. An intrapreneur thinks like an entrepreneur. 2. An intrapreneur works like an entrepreneur. 3. An intrapreneur possesses the urgency of an entrepreneur. 4. An intrapreneur innovates like an entrepreneur. 5. An intrapreneur protects the brand (and the money) like an entrepreneur. This list highlights the fact that intrapreneurs don’t act or think like regular employees; they act and think like owners. They’re not working for a paycheck; they’re working to build something that gives them pride and fulfillment. In doing so, they want recognition,
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Traits of Companies That Attract Intrapreneurs 1. Their executives are comfortable taking calculated risks and encouraging creativity. 2. Their compensation plan incentivizes innovation and outstanding performers. 3. Their executives play offense (improve) instead of just playing defense (cover their asses). 4. Their executives elevate potential stars rather than hold them back. 5. Their executives actively seek out ideas from all layers of the organization. 6. Their executives actively look for young talent to keep the company vibrant and innovative.
Too many people judge entrepreneurs by who they are now instead of who they were before. They also fail to see (or don’t want to see) the pressure that comes with success.
Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make the Competition Irrelevant by W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne,
The premise of the book is that rather than competing in games where you’re an underdog, find unexplored new markets in which you can win—and ultimately make the competition irrelevant.
Process the competitive landscape: Is this a place where you believe you can do well, given who your competition is? Do you possess the necessary resources to compete? Do you need to acquire specific resources before you can compete?
Have you educated yourself about the competition? Is there some additional benefit your competitor has that you can’t beat, no matter what you do?
In Blue Ocean Strategy, the authors warned against trying to beat competitors at their strengths.
Master Knowing Yourself WHO DO YOU WANT TO BE? 1. Whether it’s solitude, talking to a mentor, or using the questions we discussed in chapter 1, set aside time to get clear on who you want to be. It will help if you tap into your pain. Create a visual that is in your face constantly to remind you of your future truth. STUDY THE MOST IMPORTANT PRODUCT: YOU 2. Don’t wait for a crisis to look for clues about the most important person (you). Make the time now to inspect yourself. Become at ease with asking yourself tough questions and become clear about what drives you. The Personal Identity Audit
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1. Processing is the ability to make effective decisions based on access to information at hand with the highest odds in your favor. 2. Processing is about subjecting every difficult choice, problem, or opportunity you face to a rigorous mental analysis. 3. Processing is playing out strategies, seeing the hidden consequences, and sequencing a series of moves to permanently solve problems.
Processing Steps to Take When Someone Ticks You Off 1. Take responsibility for your role in what happened. 2. State specifically what you did to create the problem. 3. Channel your frustration into getting better and preventing future problems.
You didn’t create the crisis. It’s your reaction to the crisis that will determine the life or death of your business.
After you have calculated the cost and time, figure out the return. Let’s say a project that costs $200,000 and will take a year to complete will lower your risk of losing clients by 8 percent. You are currently writing 30,000 orders a year. Thirty thousand contracts times 8 percent equals 2,400 contracts. If each contract is worth $200, the total return is $480,000.
If you’re going to lose, don’t lose the lesson.
Every master, both in chess and in business, learns more from studying the moves that led to defeat than the ones that led to victory.
Once you’ve identified the real issues, start asking “Why?” Keep doing so until you reach a point where you can’t ask “Why?” anymore—or when you’re forced to repeat an explanation you’ve already discovered. That is your deepest why and the real cause of your problem.
Five Questions to Ask to Identify the Real Issue 1. Do I know what the real issue is, or am I looking at a symptom? 2. Does the team have the data regarding the real issue? 3. Is the issue real, or is it an assumption or someone else’s opinion? 4. Is there a tangible issue, or is it simply a hurt ego? 5. Am I thinking emotionally or logically?
Offense. The opportunity to make money or advance your business or career. The choices here often revolve around growth, expansion, marketing, and sales. 2. Defense. The opportunity to solve a problem, to stop losing money, or to stop moving backward in some way. The choices here frequently involve legal matters such as compliance and protection against competitors or market corrections.
