A book review of Anticipate – by Rob - Jan de Jong.

In order to be successful with a campaign, leaders must have a vision argues Rob-Jan de Jong in his book Anticipate.  Heis a strategy and leadership expert and he says usually a vision is not compelling or one that inspires or energizes their people. Vision is not exclusive to anyone.

To develop vision, one must sharpen two skills – The first is the ability to see things clearly – spotting the first hints of change on the horizon. The second is the power to connect the dots – turning those clues into a gripping story.With these skills, we will be able to frame the big picture, provide a direction and communicate our vision. When we anticipate change before our competitors, we create enormous strategic advantage.

The author leads us into this self-help book with the following structure:

Find the purposes and ingredients of a personal vision

See things clearly and connect the dots

Find core values to develop our vision.

A company’s vision is different from a personal vision. We focus on the latter.  A personal vision improves our leadership abilities because we are exciting the people to look to us for leadership.

Powerful visions have four fundamentals:

A vision shows the path forward: A vision provides guidance and direction to what lays ahead

A vision stretches the imagination: It takes us beyond the obvious to the unknown.

It changes the status quo and breaks through existing paradigms forcing us to tap into unseen opportunities

It energizes and mobilizes by galvanating those we lead.

In order for a vision to be persuasive, it must have emotional and intellectual appeal. When we use our imagination, we lend pathos to our vision so that its more engaging. For example, the idea of a pizza slicer evokes expectations of a speedy delivery, frozen pizzas and specialized utensils. It tethers some ideas for customer satisfaction.

Sometimes we can even use others as an example to think differently. For example, the expression WWGD stands for what-would-google-do? Start by selecting a number of iconic companies that everyone has strong brand association with.

To grow your visionary capacity, we should have the ability to see things clearly – the first signs of change often manifest as random noise or faint warning signals. And second, the ability to connect the dots to frame a bigger picture.

The author mentions categories for where we may stand with respect to these abilities: These are :

Followers, Trend Hoppers, Historians, the visionary etc.  He warns however that we are not trying to predict the future. Instead we are developing an increased awareness to push the future in a direction different from the one we currently see.

The author developed his own technique called a “Future Priming” to help executives improve their ability to see things early. Its about writing our own “FutureFacts” which is a manifestation of a possible changing reality.

And he mentions four simple rules to do this practice:

Scope for relevant and time – it should be just wide enough to include relevant signals.

Don’t make your own company – part of your future fact.

Explore the area between the conventional and the absurd by asking more “what if”

Describe an event not a trend – it may have memorable hooks to news events that transpire.

The second aspect to vision other than seeing things clearly is to connect the dots.

To connect the dots means to frame a coherent story for the path ahead. We should avoid what the author calls as Frame blindness and overconfidence.  He says make uncertainity a part of your vision. Embrace it instead of trying to quell it or to get rid of it.

The final part is about our visionary self and how to improve it.

#codingexercise
Int flip_disks_around_circle(disk disks,  int start, int count){
If start > count  or one_black_left return 0;
If disks [i] .color == black flip_adjacents (i);
Return flip_disks_around_circle (start+1);
}