Daily insights to help you change minds and drive action. Bi-weekly premium essays that dive deep on how the world’s best leaders communicate.
The Lighthouse Keeper
|
Every evening at dusk, the lighthouse keeper climbed the same narrow steps and lit the lamp. Visitors sometimes asked why the light didn’t adjust its beam as conditions changed. Would it not help, they asked, if more water were lit? The keeper would listen, nod, and say very little. Just this: If the light changed, how would a sailor know whether the shore had moved or the beam had? On stormy nights, the keeper noticed something else. No one ever asked for a wider beam then. They only asked one thing. And that was enough. How precise does your message make the direction of your organization? And how consistently do you send it out? Keep lighting the path, __ New: What the Best Leaders Say – Bi-weekly, carefully researched essays on how to change minds and drive action when the stakes are high and you care deeply. The goal is simple: to understand what the best leaders do differently so you can, too. |
What the Best Leaders Say
Daily insights to help you change minds and drive action. Bi-weekly premium essays that dive deep on how the world’s best leaders communicate.
And just like that, focus is gone.It looks like an innocent question, responsible even … you’re “just” exploring options … but here’s what really happens. It comes up in the next team meeting (“The boss wants to know”).It’s not exactly a priority, just something “to be aware of”. Someone volunteers to dig a little deeper, just to be helpful. Someone else adds a related idea that might also be worth exploring. A short list appears.People want to be supportive, so they say yes. By the end of...
Almost everyone misses the point of this quote.And it’s why you struggle with focus in practice even though you know everything about it in theory.Here’s how the quote continues:“You have to pick carefully.”That’s what is so often missed.People quote Jobs and think focus is about saying no.But saying no is meaningless when you don’t know what you say “yes” to.→ What do you pick?Can you articulate it with unmistakable clarity?Chances are you can’t.How do I know?Because almost everyone glosses...
What the Best Leaders Say Issue 4 Welcome to the New Year. Many leaders begin it with renewed energy and good intentions.Even if resolutions are not your thing, almost everyone I spoke to recently shared the same wish. Better focus. There’s also a familiar frustration. That it feels the same every year. You start the year with strong momentum, but then things quickly begin to drift once everyday work takes over. This issue looks closely at why that happens. And it turns out to have less to do...