Strategic Thinking Quotes

If you want to succeed and leave your competitors behind, you need great plans and even greater strategies.

The most attractive thing about you should have less to do with your face or body and more to do with your attitude and how you treat people.

Don't settle for anything less. Rise up and optimize your talents through strategic thinking and big dream. Your God should be your guide in all things.

Psychopathy was positively associated with in-house ratings of charisma and presentation style: creativity, good strategic thinking, and excellent communication skills.

Tweet others the way you want to be tweeted.

This Strategic, Mutually Beneficial and Romantically Oriented Alliance to Help Further Our Respective Careers—” “S.M.B.R.O.A.H.F.O.R.C. for short,” I offer. “Yeah, uh, I don’t think that’s shorter,” Caz tells me.

Strategic thinking enables boards to anticipate and adapt to disruptions, ensuring the organization remains agile and resilient.

7 keys to getting more things done: 1 start 2 dont make excuses 3 celebrate small steps 4 ignore critics 5 be consistent 6 be open 7 stay positive

It was badly received by the generation to which it was first addressed, and the outpouring of angry nonsense to which it gave rise is sad to think upon. But the present generation will probably behave just as badly if another Darwin should arise, and inflict upon them that which the generality of mankind most hate—the necessity of revising their convictions. Let them, then, be charitable to us ancients; and if they behave no better than the men of my day to some new benefactor, let them recollect that, after all, our wrath did not come to much, and vented itself chiefly in the bad language of sanctimonious scolds. Let them as speedily perform a strategic right-about-face, and follow the truth wherever it leads.

Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.' In other words, love is a dominant strategy.

A dream is the frame or portrait or a construction or focus of one's vision by means of perception, based on what he or she knows and settles within via strategic thinking.

Learn to master your thoughts and watch closely what you deposit into your spirit. Speak over your life. Living in peace has transformative power.

Change never happens at the pace we think it should. It happens over years of people joining together, strategizing, sharing, and pulling all the levers they possibly can. Gradually, excruciatingly slowly, things start to happen, and then suddenly, seemingly out of the blue, something will tip.

I raise my head and see a red illuminated EXIT sign and as my eyes adjust I see tigers, cavemen with long spears, cavewomen wearing strategically modest skins, wolfish dogs. My heart is racing and for a liquor-addled moment I think Holy shit, I've gone all the way back to the Stone Age until I realize that EXIT signs tend to congregate in the twentieth century.

You will not seduce anyone by simply depending on your engaging personality, or by occasionally doing something noble or alluring. Seduction is a process that occurs over time—the longer you take and the slower you go, the deeper you will penetrate into the mind of your victim. It is an art that requires patience, focus, and strategic thinking. You need to always be one step ahead of your victim, throwing dust in their eyes, casting a spell, keeping them off balance.

Always think at least two steps ahead [in everything, with everyone].

Success is not just about hard work, it's about working smart. So, take a break from the grind and strategize like a pro.

We need serious strategic and tactical thinking about how to create new models of leadership and forge the kind of persons to actualize these models.

Crafting a brain requires reflection strategic thinking and self-awareness.

Without good strategic thinking, one event could be the end for the company. One mistake could invite demise. One unexpected situation in global supply chains, and next thing you know the company is filing for bankruptcy. Before these things ever happen, board members in the boardroom ought to be discussing and planning for how the company would respond if it were to happen.

I think she broke, but not in the way I--or any of us--expected. She didn't go crazy. She became more focused. More strategic.

To pretend to ignore the enemy is the best way to seduce the enemy

Chess, for all its strategic complexity, isn’t a great model for decision-making in life, where most of our decisions involve hidden information and a much greater influence of luck.

John Frame’s ‘tri-perspectivalism’ helps me understand Willow. The Willow Creek style churches have a ‘kingly’ emphasis on leadership, strategic thinking, and wise administration. The danger there is that the mechanical obscures how organic and spontaneous church life can be. The Reformed churches have a ‘prophetic’ emphasis on preaching, teaching, and doctrine. The danger there is that we can have a naïve and unBiblical view that, if we just expound the Word faithfully, everything else in the church — leader development, community building, stewardship of resources, unified vision — will just happen by themselves. The emerging churches have a ‘priestly’ emphasis on community, liturgy and sacraments, service and justice. The danger there is to view ‘community’ as the magic bullet in the same way Reformed people view preaching.

Effective board meetings go beyond mere discussion and information sharing. They should be forums for critical thinking, problem-solving, and strategic decision-making.

The poor wish to be rich, the rich wish to be happy, the single wish to be married, and the married wish to be dead. Ann Landers

Before you start yelling at someone for their behavior, see why they are acting that way. Change the game and everyone can win.

Strategic thinking requires the ability to contemplate possibilities that are not immediately present.

If we are to remain relevant and not delegate our strategic decision-making to machines, we must create innovative social and economic ecosystems that become stronger under stress and through shocks.

We think in story. It’s hardwired in our brain. It’s how we make strategic sense of the otherwise overwhelming world around us.

You are responsible for everything you TWEET and RETWEET.

Are you stalking me or something?' 'Ha...Well, I'd rather think of it as strategically putting myself in your path so we can be friends....But if you want to call it stalking, okay.

When we have to think strategically, we also have to accept our complicity: we forgo any illusions of purity; we give up the safety of exteriority. If we are not exterior to the problem under investigation, we too are the problem under investigation. Diversity work is messy, even dirty, work.

The yardstick for successful people is different than for unsuccessful people. Successful people are criticized for times they fail. Unsuccessful people are praised for times they achieve.

Oftentimes I think it is far better to listen for an answer, rather than talk out of an effort to create one.

In all spheres of life, there are constraints. You have to develop your own strategy to overcome each constraint.

Our goal is more modest: We simply attempt to be fearful when others are greedy and to be greedy only when others are fearful.

If you don't take care of your money your money won't take care of you.

Strategic thinking requires both diagnosis and design.

A fundamental approach to life transformation is using social media for therapy; it forces you to have an opinion, provides intellectual stimulation, increases awareness, boosts self-confidence, and offers the possibility of hope.

Strategic warriors operate much differently. They think ahead toward their long-term goals, decide which fights to avoid and which are inevitable, know how to control and channel their emotions. When forced to fight, they do so with indirection and subtle maneuver, making their manipulations hard to trace. In this way they can maintain the peaceful exterior so cherished in these political times.

When your strategy is deep and far-reaching, then what you gain by your calculations is much, so you can win before you even fight. When your strategic thinking is shallow and nearsighted, then what you gain by your calculations is little, so you lose before you do battle. Much strategy prevails over little strategy, so those with no strategy cannot but be defeated. Therefore it is said that victorious warriers win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win.

And a variety of more colorful names. Hypothetically.” The privateer cast him an assessing glance. “Just how did you know I wasn’t who I claimed to be, Mister Brekker?” Kaz shrugged. “You speak Kerch like a native—a rich native. You don’t talk like someone who came up with sailors and street thugs.” The privateer turned slightly, giving Kaz his full attention. His ease was gone, and now he looked like a man who might command armies. “Mister Brekker,” he said. “Kaz, if I may? I am in a vulnerable position. I am a king ruling a country with an empty treasury, facing enemies on all sides. There are also forces within my country that might seize any absence as an opportunity to make their own bid for power.” “So you’re saying you’d make an excellent hostage.” “I suspect that the ransom for me would be considerably less than the price Kuwei has on his head. Really, it’s a bit of a blow to my self-esteem.” “You don’t seem to be suffering,” said Kaz. “Sturmhond was a creation of my youth, and his reputation still serves me well. I cannot bid on Kuwei Yul-Bo as the king of Ravka. I hope your plan will play out the way you think it will. But if it doesn’t, the loss of such a prize would be seen as a humiliating blunder diplomatically and strategically. I enter that auction as Sturmhond or as no one at all. If that is a problem—” Kaz settled his hands on his cane. “As long as you don’t try to con me, you can enter as the Fairy Queen of Istamere.

The one with the plan is the one with the power. It doesn’t matter in what kind of activity you’re involved. Employees want to follow the business leader with a good business plan. Volunteers want to join the pastor with a good ministry plan. Children want to be with the adult who has the well-thought-out vacation plan. If you practice strategic thinking, others will listen to you and they will want to follow you. If

Actively self-reflecting on the approaches that you are taking fosters a strategic stance that is really important in life. Strategic thinking distinguishes between people of comparable ability and effort. This can make the difference between people who achieve and people who have the potential to achieve, but don’t.

Give serious thought to why your company should care about your strategy. Specifically, find problems that the board wants to be solved. What are senior managers scared of? Part of becoming a credible strategic thinker is learning effective approaches to selling ideas for your situation. You’ll know that you’re getting better at selling (or pitching) strategy when managers start coming to you when there is strategic thinking to be done.

You might think that having more options is always a good thing. But thinking strategically, you can often do better by cutting off options.

After learning something, you should ideally refresh your memory of it at the following intervals: one, ten, thirty and sixty days afterwards.

S.T.O.P. = Start To Open Possibilities

Group Thinking” or lack of courage to ask the tough and strategic questions is the chief weakness on Boards today.

I have the simplest tastes. I am always satisfied with the best.

Grey Hair Doesn't Guarantee Grey Matter.

The best AI techniques are not the ones most talked about or the most sophisticated; the best AI techniques solve a problem with adherence to business needs and constraints.

Feronia played at politics the way she played chess--shrewdly, always thinking about her next move. In this game, Feronia was queen, and Byrony a pawn. Normally, there was no comparing their strengths. But if a pawn was clever and evaded the ire of stronger pieces, if it moved strategically, if it refused to yield, there were ways it might advance. Ways it might become a queen.

The sea slapped ominously, confessing its strategic impartiality. The sea is an international sea, and the sky a universal sky. Often we forget that. Often we think that what is verging upon us is ours alone. We forget that there are other sides entirely.

Along with the mystical wonderment and sense of ecological responsibility that comes with the recognition of connectedness, more disturbing images come to mind. When applied to economics, connectedness seems to take the form of chain stores, multinational corporations, and international trade treaties which wipe out local enterprise and indigenous culture. When I think of it in the realm of religion, I envision smug missionaries who have done such a good job of convincing native people everywhere that their World-Maker is the same as God, and by this shoddy sleight of hand have been steadily impoverishing the world of the great fecundity and complex localism of belief systems that capture truths outside the Western canon. And I wonder—if everything's connected, does that mean that everything can be manipulated and controlled centrally by those who know how to pull strings at strategic places?

Complexity is the prodigy of the world. Simplicity is the sensation of the universe. Behind complexity, there is always simplicity to be revealed. Inside simplicity, there is always complexity to be discovered.” —Gang Yu

If you’re a manager, remember that one third to one half of your workforce is probably introverted, whether they appear that way or not. Think twice about how you design your organization’s office space. Don’t expect introverts to get jazzed up about open office plans or, for that matter, lunchtime birthday parties or team-building retreats. Make the most of introverts’ strengths—these are the people who can help you think deeply, strategize, solve complex problems, and spot canaries in your coal mine. Also, remember the dangers of the New Groupthink. If it’s creativity you’re after, ask your employees to solve problems alone before sharing their ideas. If you want the wisdom of the crowd, gather it electronically, or in writing, and make sure people can’t see each other’s ideas until everyone’s had a chance to contribute. Face-to-face contact is important because it builds trust, but group dynamics contain unavoidable impediments to creative thinking. Arrange for people to interact one-on-one and in small, casual groups. Don’t mistake assertiveness or eloquence for good ideas. If you have a proactive work force (and I hope you do), remember that they may perform better under an introverted leader than under an extroverted or charismatic one.

Almost as an article of faith, some individuals believe that conspiracies are either kooky fantasies or unimportant aberrations. To be sure, wacko conspiracy theories do exist. There are people who believe that the United States has been invaded by a secret United Nations army equipped with black helicopters, or that the country is secretly controlled by Jews or gays or feminists or black nationalists or communists or extraterrestrial aliens. But it does not logically follow that all conspiracies are imaginary. Conspiracy is a legitimate concept in law: the collusion of two or more people pursuing illegal means to effect some illegal or immoral end. People go to jail for committing conspiratorial acts. Conspiracies are a matter of public record, and some are of real political significance. The Watergate break-in was a conspiracy, as was the Watergate cover-up, which led to Nixon’s downfall. Iran-contra was a conspiracy of immense scope, much of it still uncovered. The savings and loan scandal was described by the Justice Department as “a thousand conspiracies of fraud, theft, and bribery,” the greatest financial crime in history. Often the term “conspiracy” is applied dismissively whenever one suggests that people who occupy positions of political and economic power are consciously dedicated to advancing their elite interests. Even when they openly profess their designs, there are those who deny that intent is involved. In 1994, the officers of the Federal Reserve announced they would pursue monetary policies designed to maintain a high level of unemployment in order to safeguard against “overheating” the economy. Like any creditor class, they preferred a deflationary course. When an acquaintance of mine mentioned this to friends, he was greeted skeptically, “Do you think the Fed bankers are deliberately trying to keep people unemployed?” In fact, not only did he think it, it was announced on the financial pages of the press. Still, his friends assumed he was imagining a conspiracy because he ascribed self-interested collusion to powerful people. At a World Affairs Council meeting in San Francisco, I remarked to a participant that U.S. leaders were pushing hard for the reinstatement of capitalism in the former communist countries. He said, “Do you really think they carry it to that level of conscious intent?” I pointed out it was not a conjecture on my part. They have repeatedly announced their commitment to seeing that “free-market reforms” are introduced in Eastern Europe. Their economic aid is channeled almost exclusively into the private sector. The same policy holds for the monies intended for other countries. Thus, as of the end of 1995, “more than $4.5 million U.S. aid to Haiti has been put on hold because the Aristide government has failed to make progress on a program to privatize state-owned companies” (New York Times 11/25/95). Those who suffer from conspiracy phobia are fond of saying: “Do you actually think there’s a group of people sitting around in a room plotting things?” For some reason that image is assumed to be so patently absurd as to invite only disclaimers. But where else would people of power get together – on park benches or carousels? Indeed, they meet in rooms: corporate boardrooms, Pentagon command rooms, at the Bohemian Grove, in the choice dining rooms at the best restaurants, resorts, hotels, and estates, in the many conference rooms at the White House, the NSA, the CIA, or wherever. And, yes, they consciously plot – though they call it “planning” and “strategizing” – and they do so in great secrecy, often resisting all efforts at public disclosure. No one confabulates and plans more than political and corporate elites and their hired specialists. To make the world safe for those who own it, politically active elements of the owning class have created a national security state that expends billions of dollars and enlists the efforts of vast numbers of people.

My concern, however, is that decision makers are too often caught in traditional, linear (and nondisruptive) thinking or too absorbed by immediate concerns to think strategically about the forces of disruption and innovation shaping our future.

Bourdieu's interpretation was that tastes were serving as strategic tools. While working-class tastes seemed mainly a default (serving at best to express group belongingness and solidarity), for everyone else taste was not only a product of economic and educational background but, as it developed through life, a force mobilized as part of their quest for social status (or what Bourdieu called symbolic power). What we have agreed to call tastes, he said, is an array of symbolic associations we use to set ourselves apart from those whose social ranking is beneath us, and to take aim at the status we think we deserve. Taste is a means of distinguishing ourselves from others, the pursuit of distinction. And its end product is to perpetuate and reproduce the class structure.

While CEO of P&G, John Pepper was once asked in an interview which skill or characteristic was most important to look for when hiring new employees. Was it leadership? Analytical ability? Problem solving? Collaboration? Strategic thinking? Or something else? His answer was integrity. He explained, “All the rest, we can teach them after they get here.

If a project correspond to your vision, but you are learning nothing new, look for somebody else to do it for you

In business, being present is important. But so is thinking several steps ahead.

How you think matters. How you act matters more.

The better the questions, the more attentive the listening, the richer the reflection, the better the solutions, and the deeper is the learning.

In human relationships, those who do not love are rarely loved: those who will not be friends end up by having none. [p. 15 apud Thinking Strategically; on the "Intransigence strategy"]

None of my ten friends, even today, ascribes moral evil to Hitler, although most of them think (after the fact) that he made fatal strategical mistakes which even they themselves might have made at the time. His worst mistake was his selection of advisers—a backhand tribute to the Leader's virtues of trustfulness and loyalty, to his very innocence of the knowledge of evil, fully familiar to those who have heard partisans of F. D. R. or Ike explain how things went wrong.

Now if you want a book about prayer, this one’s probably not for you. You can find some wonderful books on prayer by some scholarly writers, books that are well worth the time spent reading them. In fact, I highly suggest you do. Can’t really learn too much about prayer, can you? But here, in these pages, we aren’t going to merely talk about prayer or think about praying. No. Get ready.

You don't need to sit on a throne before you have the chance to dream; you don't have to feel fat meat in-between your molars to become a strategic dreamer. You can be a dreamer once you can think; dreams are germinate from imaginations; and survive through actions! Indecision weakens dreams; inaction kills them!

However you see the world, realize that you can be successful if you do the work. Being positive and doing nothing will generate nothing. Being negative and fighting everything that cross your path can still lead to success.

Most of us in life are tacticians, not strategists. We become so enmeshed in the conflicts we face that we can think only of how to get what we want in the battle we are currently facing. To think strategically is difficult and unnatural. You may imagine you are being strategic, but in all likelihood you are merely being tactical. To have the power that only strategy can bring, you must be able to elevate yourself above the battlefield, to focus on your long-term objectives, to craft an entire campaign, to get out of the reactive mode that so many battles in life lock you into.

Khrushchev first denounced Stalin's purges at the Soviet Communist Party's 20th Congress. After his dramatic speech, someone in the audience shouted out, asking what Khrushchev had been doing at the time. Khrushchev responded by asking the questioner to please stand up and identify himself. The audience remained silent. Khrushchev replied: "That is what I did, too.

Mischel refers to this skill as the “strategic allocation of attention,” and he argues that it’s the skill underlying self-control. Too often, we assume that willpower is about having strong moral fiber. But that’s wrong. Willpower is really about properly directing the spotlight of attention, learning how to control that short list of thoughts in working memory. It’s about realizing that if we’re thinking about the marshmallow, we’re going to eat it, which is why we need to look away.

Many of us live with incredible tension and anxiety because we think that our dreams will come true if we just get the right degree, if we just meet the right people, if we just get the right job. We assume our happiness is tied to our success, and our success depends on our performance. So we sweat and struggle and scheme and strategize, and we wonder why we aren’t enjoying life.

My friend Olan Hendrix remarked, “Strategic thinking is like showering, you have to keep doing it.” If you expect to solve any major problem once, you’re in for disappointment. Little things can be won easily through systems and personal discipline. But major issues need major strategic thinking time. What Thane Yost said is really true: “The will to win is worthless if you do not have the will to prepare.” If you want to be an effective strategic thinker, then you need to become a continuous strategic thinker.

WHAT MAKES YOU HAPPY? Over two thousand years ago, Aristotle came to the unsurprising conclusion that what a person wants above all is to be happy. In 1961, the US psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi wrote: ‘While happiness itself is sought for its own sake, every other goal – health, beauty, money or power – is valued only because we expect that it will make us happy.’ Csikszentmihalyi looked for a term that described the state of feeling happy. He called it ‘flow’. But when are we ‘in the flow’? After interviewing over a thousand people about what made them happy, he found that all the responses had five things in common. Happiness, or ‘flow’, occurs when we are: • intensely focused on an activity • of our own choosing, that is • neither under-challenging (boreout) nor over-challenging (burnout), that has • a clear objective, and that receives • immediate feedback. Csikszentmihalyi discovered that people who are ‘in the flow’ not only feel a profound sense of satisfaction, they also lose track of time and forget themselves completely because they are so immersed in what they are doing.

KEYS TO WARFARE The world is full of people looking for a secret formula for success and power. They do not want to think on their own; they just want a recipe to follow. They are attracted to the idea of strategy for that very reason. In their minds strategy is a series of steps to be followed toward a goal. They want these steps spelled out for them by an expert or a guru. Believing in the power of imitation, they want to know exactly what some great person has done before. Their maneuvers in life are as mechanical as their thinking. To separate yourself from such a crowd, you need to get rid of a common misconception: the essence of strategy is not to carry out a brilliant plan that proceeds in steps; it is to put yourself in situations where you have more options than the enemy does. Instead of grasping at Option A as the single right answer, true strategy is positioning yourself to be able to do A, B, or C depending on the circumstances. That is strategic depth of thinking, as opposed to formulaic thinking.

The army leadership, taking these wishes of Hitler on board and also bearing in mind the outcome of the war games, had already adjusted its strategic thinking when, on 18 February, Hitler spoke of the favourable impression he had gained of Manstein’s plan the day before.42 The die was now cast. By chance, the basic thoughts of the amateur had coincided with the brilliantly unorthodox planning of the professional strategist. Further refined by the OKH, the Manstein plan gave Hitler what he wanted: a surprise assault in the most unexpected area which, though not without risk, had the boldness of genius. The

We think of modern Europe as a region of culture, democracy, and peace. As having escaped history. But that escape is largely due to the Americans’ restructuring of all things European. What lies under the historical veneer of calm is the most war-torn and strategically unstable patch of land on the planet.

As a species, we haven’t evolved to plan 20 years into the future. As a rule, our decision-making is myopic, shortsighted, and lacks imagination. We’re heavily incentivized to seek rewards in the present, which can greatly cost our long-term Future Selves. [If you don't] think and strategize long term, [you'll be distracted by the short-term.] You’ll be caught up by endless distractions throughout your day. Your decisions will be myopic. You’ll cost your Future Self greatly, putting them deeper in debt in all ways.

Corporations aren’t citizens or neighbors or parents. They can’t vote or serve in combat. They don’t learn the Pledge of Allegiance. They don’t have souls. They’re revenue machines. I don’t have any problem with that. I think it’s absurd to lay moral or civic obligations on them. Their only obligations are strategic, and while they can get very complex, at root they’re not civic entities. With corporations, I have no problem with government enforcement of statutes and regulatory policy serving a conscience function.

But if you think about moral reasoning as a skill we humans evolved to further our social agendas—to justify our own actions and to defend the teams we belong to—then things will make a lot more sense. Keep your eye on the intuitions, and don’t take people’s moral arguments at face value. They’re mostly post hoc constructions made up on the fly, crafted to advance one or more strategic objectives.

[R]esitance is by nature reactive; it is not forward-looking. And anti-Trumpism is not a politics. My worry is that liberals will get so caught up in countering his every move, essentially playing his game, that they will fail to seize -- or even recognize -- the opportunity he has given them. Now that he has destroyed conventional Republicanism and what was left of principled conservatism, the playing field is empty. For the first time in living memory, we liberals have no ideological adversary worthy of the name. So it is crucial that we look beyond Trump. The only adversary left is ourselves. And we have mastered the art of self-sabotage. At a time when we liberals need to speak in a way that convinces people from very different walks of life, in every part of the country, that they share a common destiny and need to stand together, our rhetoric encourages self-righteous narcissism. At a moment when political consciousness and strategizing need to be developed, we are expending our energies on symbolic drama over identity. At a time when it is crucial to direct our efforts into seizing institutional power by winning elections, we dissipate them in expressive movements indifferent to the effects they may have on the voting public. In an age when we need to educate young people to think of themselves as citizens with duties toward each other, we encourage them instead to descend into the rabbit hole of the self. The frustrating truth is that we have no political vision to offer the nation, and we are thinking and speaking and acting in ways guaranteed to prevent one from emerging.

Humankind’s struggle against a hostile environment causes people throughout the ages to deploy their full armory of logic, training, strategy, imagination, inventiveness, and creativity. We are born with the natural ability to strategize. The most influential tool in humankind’s intellectual tool kit is the ability to regenerate a sense of unruffled alertness, to establish a poised stance that leads to intuitive discoveries generated by the conscious and unconscious mind constantly filtering a plethora of data, selecting critical facts, and producing elegant solutions to seemingly insoluble dilemmas.

Positive social change results mostly from connecting more deeply to the people around you than rising above them, from coordinated rather than solo action. Among the virtues that matter are those traditionally considered feminine rather than masculine, more nerd than jock: listening, respect, patience, negotiation, strategic planning, storytelling. But we like our lone and exceptional heroes, the drama of violence and virtue of muscle, or at least that's what we get, over and over, and from it we don't get much of a picture of how change actually happens and what our role in it might be, or how ordinary people matter. "Unhappy the land that needs heros" is a line of Bertolt Brecht's I've gone to dozens of times, but now I'm more inclined to think, pity the land that thinks it needs a hero, or doesn't know it has lots and what they look like.

Let’s see, you will need a project plan, resource allocation, a timeline, test cycles, a budget, a contingency budget, lots of diagrams, flowcharts, a media release, a strategic vision, a charter, technical specifications, business rules, travel expenses, a development environment, deployment instructions, a user acceptance test, stationary, overtime schedule, a mock-up, prototypes…” “Tell me,” she said, “did the people who built the pyramids have any of those?” “Mostly, they had beer. Come to think of it, if there had been such a thing as a Business Analyst in ancient Egypt, then the hieroglyph for it would have been very graphical, if you know what I mean.

US Ship: Please change course 0.5 degrees to the south to avoid a collision. CND reply: Recommend you divert your course 15 degrees to the South to avoid a collision. US Ship: This is the Captain of a US Navy Ship. I say again, divert your course. CND reply: No. I say again, you divert YOUR course! US Ship: THIS IS THE AIRCRAFT CARRIER USS CORAL SEA, WE ARE A LARGE WARSHIP OF THE US NAVY. DIVERT YOUR COURSE NOW!! CND reply: This is a lighthouse. Your call.

If you’re a manager, remember that one third to one half of your workforce is probably introverted, whether they appear that way or not. Think twice about how you design your organization’s office space. Don’t expect introverts to get jazzed up about open office plans or, for that matter, lunchtime birthday parties or team-building retreats. Make the most of introverts’ strengths—these are the people who can help you think deeply, strategize, solve complex problems, and spot canaries in your coal mine.

This book is just not meant for pretty reading. It’s not for coffee-table curiosity and other such cameo appearances. Think of it instead as industrial-grade survival gear. Duct tape and superglue. Leather straps lashed around it. Old shoelaces maybe. In tight double knots. Whatever it takes to keep it all together. Because this is war. The fight of your life. A very real enemy has been strategizing and scheming against you, assaulting you, coming after your emotions, your mind, your man, your child, your future. In fact, he’s doing it right this second. Right where you’re sitting. Right where you are. But I say his reign of terror stops here. Stops now. He might keep coming, but he won’t have victory anymore. Because it all starts failing when we start praying.

You have a filter, a characteristic way of responding to the world around you. We all do. Your filter tells you which stimuli to notice and which to ignore; which to love and which to hate. It creates your innate motivations — are you competitive, altruistic, or ego driven? It defines how you think — are you disciplined or laissez-faire, practical or strategic? It forges your prevailing attitudes — are you optimistic or cynical, calm or anxious, empathetic or cold? It creates in you all of your distinct patterns of thought, feeling, and behavior. In effect, your filter is the source of your talents.

The lampstand was position strategically to do one things: cast its light on the table and on the bread that represented God's provision and presence. For generations the lampstand of the tabernacle stood to highlight the object that best represented God's goodness and provision, the same object that Jesus would one day use to symbolize His own body. (Jesus compares church to a lampstand in Revelation- a strong reminder of the church's responsibility). Everything about these churches 0 their teaching, practices, and work-- was challenged for one reason in Revelation: They were losing their effectiveness as God's light to their communities.

When facing Me-versus-Us moral dilemmas of resisting selfishness, our rapid intuitions are good, honed by evolutionary selection for cooperation in a sea of green-beard markers.35 And in such settings, regulating and formalizing the prosociality (i.e., moving it from the realm of intuition to that of cogitation) can even be counterproductive, a point emphasized by Samuel Bowles.* In contrast, when doing moral decision making during Us-versus-Them scenarios, keep intuitions as far away as possible. Instead, think, reason, and question; be deeply pragmatic and strategically utilitarian; take their perspective, try to think what they think, try to feel what they feel. Take a deep breath, and then do it all again.*

Delegating, thinking strategically, communicating—you may think this all sounds like Management 101. And you’re right. The most basic elements of management are often what trip up managers early in their careers. And because they are the basics, the bosses of rookie managers often take them for granted. They shouldn’t—an extraordinary number of people fail to develop these skills. I’ve maintained an illusion throughout this article—that only rookie managers suffer because they haven’t mastered these core skills. But the truth is, managers at all levels make these mistakes. An organization that supports its new managers by helping them to develop these skills will have surprising advantages over the competition.

These are all issues in search of clarity. The good listener knows that, via conversation with another person, we’d ideally move from a confused, agitated state of mind to a calmer and more focused one. Together, through talking, we would work out what is really at stake. But, in reality, this tends not to happen because few of us are sufficiently aware of how to achieve this clarity from our conversation. There aren’t enough good listeners. People tend to assert rather than analyse. They restate in many different ways the fact that they are worried, excited, sad or hopeful, and their interlocutor listens but does not help them to discover more. Good listeners fight against this with a range of conversational gambits. They hover as the other speaks; they offer encouraging remarks; they make gentle positive gestures: a sigh of sympathy, a nod of encouragement, a strategic ‘hmm’ of interest. All the time, they are egging the other to go deeper into issues. They love saying: ‘Tell me more about…’; ‘I was fascinated when you said…’; ‘Why did that happen, do you think?’ or ‘How did you feel about that?

It is important to note that the lampstand in the tabernacle did not cast a broad light, illuminating everything in the tabernacle; the focus of its beam was specifically on the bread of presence. Likewise, the church is not called to illuminate everything -- its light should be concentrated on showing others who God is. For church leaders, our jobs are clear: we have to keep the wicks trimmed, the light burning, and the lampstand in its proper place. if the light begins to dim, we must immediately move into action. God's intention is for the church to be placed strategically in culture in order to show Himself to the world. Anytime the church becomes ineffective in its role to illuminate Christ, it must rekindle and reinvent itself around its core purpose.

Characteristics of the Council 1. The council exists as a device to gain understanding about important issues facing the organization. 2. The Council is assembled and used by the leading executive and usually consists of five to twelve people. 3. Each Council member has the ability to argue and debate in search of understanding, not from the egoistic need to win a point or protect a parochial interest. 4. Each Council member retains the respect of every other Council member, without exception. 5. Council members come from a range of perspectives, but each member has deep knowledge about some aspect of the organization and/or the environment in which it operates. 6. The Council includes key members of the management team but is not limited to members of the management team, nor is every executive automatically a member. 7. The Council is a standing body, not an ad hoc committee assembled for a specific project. 8. The Council meets periodically, as much as once a week or as infrequently as once per quarter. 9. The Council does not seek consensus, recognizing that consensus decisions are often at odds with intelligent decisions. The responsibility for the final decision remains with the leading executive. 10. The Council is an informal body, not listed on any formal organization chart or in any formal documents. 11. The Council can have a range of possible names, usually quite innocuous. In the good-to-great companies, they had benign names like Long-Range Profit Improvement Committee, Corporate Products Committee, Strategic Thinking Group, and Executive Council.

Of all the birds, they are the ones who mind their being armless most: witness how, when they walk, their heads jerk back and forth like rifle bolts. How they heave their shoulders into each stride as if they hoped that by some chance new bones there would come popping out with a boxing glove on the end of each. Little Elvises, the hairdo slicked with too much grease, they convene on my lawn to strategize for their class-action suit. Flight they would trade in a New York minute for a black muscle car and a fist on the shift at any stale green light. But here in my yard by the Jack-in-the-Box Dumpster they can only fossick in the grass for remnants of the world’s stale buns. And this despite all the crow poems that have been written because men like to see themselves as crows (the head-jerk performed in the rearview mirror, the dark brow commanding the rainy weather). So I think I know how they must feel: ripped off, shook down, taken to the cleaners. What they’d like to do now is smash a phone against a wall. But they can’t, so each one flies to a bare branch and screams.

Keeping a new church outwardly focused from the beginning is much easier than trying to refocus an inwardly concerned church. In order to plant a successful church, you have to know that you know that you are undeniably called by God. The call to start a new church plant is not the same as the call to serve in an existing church or work in a ministry-related organization. You may be the greatest preacher this side of Billy Graham but still not be called to start a church. If you think you may have allowed an improper reason, voice or emotion to lead you to the idea of starting a new church, back away now. Spend some more time with God. You don’t want to move forward on a hunch or because you feel “pretty sure” that you should be planting a church. You have to be completely certain. “You’re afraid? So what. Everybody’s afraid. Fear is the common ground of humanity. The question you must wrestle to the ground is, ‘Will I allow my fear to bind me to mediocrity?’” When you think of a people group that you might be called to reach, does your heart break for them? If so, you may want to consider whether God is specifically calling you to reach that group for His kingdom. Is your calling clear? Has your calling been confirmed by others? Are you humbled by the call? Have you acted on your call? Do you know for certain that God has called you to start a new church? Nail it down. When exactly were you called? What were the circumstances surrounding your call? How did it match up with the sources of proper calling? Do you recognize the four specific calls in your calling? How? How does your call measure up to biblical characteristics? What is the emerging vision that God is giving you with this call? As your dependence on God grows, so will your church. One of the most common mistakes that enthusiastic and well-meaning church starters make is to move to a new location and start trying to reach people without thinking through even a short-term strategy. Don’t begin until you count the cost. why would you even consider starting a church (the only institution Jesus left behind and the only one that will last forever) without first developing a God-infused, specific, winning strategy? There are two types of pain: the pain of front-end discipline and the pain of back-end regret. With the question of strategy development, you get to choose which pain you’d rather live with. Basically, a purpose, mission and vision statement provides guiding principles that describe what God has called you to do (mission), how you will do it (purpose) and what it will look like when you get it done (vision). Keep your statement simple. Be as precise as possible. Core values are the filter through which you fulfill your strategy. These are important, because your entire strategy will be created and implemented in such a way as to bring your core values to life. Your strategic aim will serve as the beacon that guides the rest of your strategy. It is the initial purpose for which you are writing your strategy. He will not send more people to you than you are ready to receive. So what can you do? The same thing Dr. Graham does. Prepare in a way that enables God to open the floodgates into your church. If you are truly ready, He will send people your way. If you do the work we’ve described in this chapter, you’ll be able to build your new church on a strong base of God-breathed preparation. You’ll know where you are, where you’re going and how you are going to get there. You’ll be standing in the rain with a huge bucket, ready to take in the deluge. However, if you don’t think through your strategy, write it down and then implement it, you’ll be like the man who stands in the rainstorm with a Dixie cup. You’ll be completely unprepared to capture what God is pouring out. The choice is yours!

Geopolitics is ultimately the study of the balance between options and lim­itations. A country's geography determines in large part what vulnerabilities it faces and what tools it holds. "Countries with flat tracks of land -- think Poland or Russia -- find building infrastructure easier and so become rich faster, but also find them­selves on the receiving end of invasions. This necessitates substantial stand­ing armies, but the very act of attempting to gain a bit of security automat­ically triggers angst and paranoia in the neighbors. "Countries with navigable rivers -- France and Argentina being premier examples -- start the game with some 'infrastructure' already baked in. Such ease of internal transport not only makes these countries socially uni­fied, wealthy, and cosmopolitan, but also more than a touch self-important. They show a distressing habit of becoming overimpressed with themselves -- and so tend to overreach. "Island nations enjoy security -- think the United Kingdom and Japan -- in part because of the physical separation from rivals, but also because they have no choice but to develop navies that help them keep others away from their shores. Armed with such tools, they find themselves actively meddling in the affairs of countries not just within arm's reach, but half a world away. "In contrast, mountain countries -- Kyrgyzstan and Bolivia, to pick a pair -- are so capital-poor they find even securing the basics difficult, mak­ing them largely subject to the whims of their less-mountainous neighbors. "It's the balance of these restrictions and empowerments that determine both possibilities and constraints, which from my point of view makes it straightforward to predict what most countries will do: · The Philippines' archipelagic nature gives it the physical stand-off of is­lands without the navy, so in the face of a threat from a superior country it will prostrate itself before any naval power that might come to its aid. · Chile's population center is in a single valley surrounded by mountains. Breaching those mountains is so difficult that the Chileans often find it easier to turn their back on the South American continent and interact economically with nations much further afield. · The Netherlands benefits from a huge portion of European trade because it controls the mouth of the Rhine, so it will seek to unite the Continent economically to maximize its economic gain while bringing in an exter­nal security guarantor to minimize threats to its independence. · Uzbekistan sits in the middle of a flat, arid pancake and so will try to expand like syrup until it reaches a barrier it cannot pass. The lack of local competition combined with regional water shortages adds a sharp, brutal aspect to its foreign policy. · New Zealand is a temperate zone country with a huge maritime frontage beyond the edge of the world, making it both wealthy and secure -- how could the Kiwis not be in a good mood every day? "But then there is the United States. It has the fiat lands of Australia with the climate and land quality of France, the riverine characteristics of Germany with the strategic exposure of New Zealand, and the island fea­tures of Japan but with oceanic moats -- and all on a scale that is quite lit­erally continental. Such landscapes not only make it rich and secure beyond peer, but also enable its navy to be so powerful that America dominates the global oceans.